This story is titled, The Death of Tommy Grimes, because when Tommy shoots a black man, a small part of him dies along with the man he has killed. Before Tommy kills the man, he is waiting for something to come for him to shoot. In the beginning of the story, he never wanted to hurt anything or anyone, but now he was waiting to kill. When Tommy is outside he thinks to himself, “There was something out there! The happy-scared feeling ran up and down Tommy’s back and his breath came in painful gasps.” Tommy is no longer as fearful of killing as he once was, but it is now a thrill to him to shoot. His morality is already slipping away even before he kills the black man. He could once tell the difference between right and wrong, but is so obsessed
