Contents Of A Dead Man's Pocket Analysis

Certain events in life can affect people in many different ways, such as causing them to change their priorities. In Contents of a Dead Man’s pocket, written by Jack Finney, Tom’s priorities are set on work first and family later, but those soon begin to shift after a dramatic event takes place in his life. People’s priorities can be focused on something as simple as work like in Tom’s case, and sometimes they need a close to death situation to give them a wake up call. When people’s priorities are misaligned they tend to know but not accept the fact, they may even have a hot guilty conscience just like Tom. One 's life events can transform their priorities, it can cause them to look differently at the life they’re living. Such as in Tom’s case when work came first but a close to death situation caused him to put his wife before it all. On page 111 of the story Tom mentions his hot guilty conscience. Tom opened the

At first we noticed Tom’s guilt that made him wonder if his priorities were right, and soon we will notice Tom actually begin to change. Tom is a perfect example of a dynamic character due to the fact that he changes so much. Later on in the story Tom is “sliding on the ledge with a clumsy desperate swiftness” (119). He wanted to get off the roof so bad and he didn’t even care about his work anymore, he just wanted to be safe and get back to his wife, which was now his top priority. So he tried to get to safety as quickly as possible, it was a very desperate attempt. Another example of Tom’s priorities forming into what they should’ve been all along was on page 120. It says how Tom simply crumbled up the paper and shoved it in his pocket, he no longer cared what happened to the paper because while out on that ledge, risking his life. He realized it wasn’t worth it at all and he began to notice what really