'Contents Of A Dead Man's Pocket'

Critical Analysis “Contents of the Dead Man’s Pocket” by Jack Finney is an excellent short story. Finney’s main character, Tom Benecke, is an ambitious young man married to Claire, tom spends a lot of his free time working rather than with her. One evening while Tom is alone , working, a valuable piece of paper flies out the window. He makes the terrible decision to go out on the ledge after the piece of paper, and a nerve-wracking adventure ensues. The three most important literary elements to “Contents of the Dead Man’s Pocket” are external conflict, internal conflict, and suspense. External conflict occurs between man and man or man and nature. The external conflict in “Contents of a Dead Man’s Pocket” primarily occurs between Tom and the ledge of his apartment building. Tom’s apartment is on the eleventh floor, so if he falls, he will die and he realizes this. Without this piece of external conflict, the story would be far less suspenseful. At one point in the story tom is out on the ledge trying to bend over to pick up the piece of paper as it lies stuck in the corner between his apartment and his neighbor's apartment “...as he stared between his legs at the terrible length of street far beneath him, a fragment of his mind

The internal conflict in “Contents of a Dead Man’s Pocket” primarily occurs within Tom while on the ledge of his apartment building. Without this element we would not know what Tom was thinking while on the ledge and it wouldn’t be as suspenseful., At one point in the story Tom thought about just leaving the yellow paper and not going after it. “...For many seconds he believed he was going to abandon the yellow sheet, that there was nothing else to do. The work could be duplicated…”(9). This is a great example of internal conflict because it shows what Tom is thinking. This element also adds suspense to the story. Another crucial element to “Contents of a Dead Man’s Pocket” is