Contents Of A Dead Man's Pocket

Have you ever read a story and wondered what would happen next? In the short story Contents of a Dead Man’s Pocket, Jack Finney uses the character Tom to display how a paper flies out of a window and the main character has to go and rescue the paper, leaving any reader to wonder how this will end. The author creates a feeling of suspense and tension in the story by using effects like foreshadowing, uncertainty, and imagery. This essay will explain how the author Jack Finney uses these effects to create that feeling in the story Contents of a Dead Man’s Pocket.

The title Contents of a Dead Man’s Pocket is an example of how the author Jack Finney uses foreshadowing to create tension in his short story. The title gives us a perspective of

After Tom sees how high the ledge is to the street the author says “he began to tremble violently, panic flaring through his mind and muscles, and he felt the blood rush from the surface of his skin. (Finney, page 6)” This example gives the reader a feeling of uncertainty because they do not know and are questioning what will happen next. Will he fall off due to his uncontrollable shaking or will he be able to calm himself? The effects of uncertainty creates a feeling of suspense due to not knowing what will happen next. The author also uses imagery to further create tension in Contents of a Dead Man’s

Imagery is when a writer uses strong descriptive words to create a mental image or idea in a story. The author says “staring down through the autumn night at Lexington Avenue, eleven stories below. (Finney, page 1)”, which is a description of the setting. Another example of imagery in the short story is “Above the muffled sound of the street traffic far below, he could hear the dry scrape of its movement, like a leaf on the pavement. (Finney, page 3)”. In this example, Finney uses strong descriptive words like “muffled sound” and “dry scrape” to describe that the paper was louder than the cars below and how it moved along, which also shows the importance of the paper. Descriptive imagery creates tension in a story because when a reader is able to imagine what's going on in the story, they are able to feel the tension by how bad a situation may be, like this paper flying out of a window at 11 stories