The Contents of a Dead Man’s Pocket is a story based on the literary element man vs. self, at first, I thought this was a man vs. nature since Tom, the protagonist has a dilemma throughout the story. But it seems that the conflict he had was not when he went outside to retrieve his paper, but in a broader view, he has a conflict with his life, with his decisions, and with his marriage. The story takes place by Tom being busy at work while his wife was getting ready to go out. Tom insists to his wife that he must finish his work in order to get promoted. While Tom was working, some of his papers blow out of the window. Tom hesitating to go, he is deciding if it 's worth the cost to retrieve his work that been really long and hard to do. He measures the ledge for both his legs and his arms, while he was brainstorming, he finds it funny for some reason. As he goes to retrieve his paper, both his physical and mental state has been focus into this moment of his life. As he slowly goes on the ledge, he looks at another direction so he would be moved emotionally by the height of the building. But as he is forced to look down to retrieve his paper, his foot slips slightly. And at that moment, he freezes up against the side of the building, he starts remembering all of his moments when he was “Alive”, when he actually enjoyed his …show more content…
Which is why he starts laughing. Hills like white elephants is a story based on man vs self since the topic of this story would be jig, the girl. She refers to the hills like “white elephants”, she is referring the elephants to her unborn baby. You can also recall the expression,”There’s an elephant in the room” because of something painfully obviously no ones wants to