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Short Story Contents Of The Dead Man's Pockets

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“At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, not winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a friend, a child, or a parent”. First lady Barbara Bush shows that ambition can sometimes be a bad thing when family is ignored because of it. Even someone with the prestigious position of the first lady realizes that ambition can be a bad thing. She proves an important point of Jack Finney’s story. In the short story “Contents of the Dead Man’s Pockets”, author Jack Finney uses the actions of the main character, Tom Bennecke to show that when man becomes overly ambitious, their priorities are out of order, which will cause regret and eventually cause him …show more content…

In the short story, Tom decides to not go to the movies with his wife, because he wants to work on a project instead. This is not a mandatory project, but he feels it is imperative for him to become more successful. Before she leaves, Tom walks her out and as he goes to shut the door “[He resists] for a moment. As the door opening [narrows], the current of warm air from the hallway…[rushes] past him with accelerated force.” (Deal 100). The author uses language in this passage to show that Tom wanted to go the movies, but feels that this project is more important. In the quote, he “resists for a moment”, this shows the conscious choice that Tom made to stay at home. He also realizes that as the “door opening narrows”, so does the opportunity for him to have a nice night with his wife. When the door opening narrows a current of “warm air rushed past him”. Warmth often signifies good things, when he allows the door to close the door to goodness also closes on him. It is as though the work is pulling him away from the goodness that is his wife and the warm hallway air. As he closes the door “he heard the slap of the window curtains against the wall and the sound of paper fluttering on his desk, and he had to push close the door.” (100). The author uses the harshness of the slap of window curtains and paper fluttering to foreshadow the impending doom that awaits Tom later in the story. He falls into a sort of fantasy when he feels the comfort of the warm air, but is snapped back to reality by the cold wind from outside. He will later become regretful that he ignored the warm air, the symbol for his wife, and instead listened to the window and the air

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Maybe he got into a fight so serious and he is murdered, nobody knows. However, the sight of this carcass or the possible imagination of what happened to him left one honest impression or virtue in the life of the narrator. The narrator begins to realize how imprudent and irresponsible he is. At one point he contemplates suicide, but realizes “the dead man is the only person on the planet worse off than I was,” he said (Boyle, 693). The narrator’s experience tonight proves that his careless actions will place him in a position that will likely end up destroying him.

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Prior to reading Elizabeth Keckley’s Behind the Scenes; or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House, I anticipated I would be reading about a woman in slavery with an unhappy past. I did not expect her story to end in a positive way. My expectations were to read of a woman bound in slavery that wrote memoirs of her saddened life and that life would continue until the day she died. I expected her to leave the home of a master and possibly become a maid or cook in the White House. I did not envision her becoming as successful as she did, her story far exceeded my expectations.

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Medina compels the reader to infer that the white color symbolizes his great feelings. As the story progresses, readers get a taste of Medina’s different moods and colors of the snow. As Medina gets closer to the city, his expectations, tone, and the snow color begin to alter. Medina and his family

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Tom thinks about how if he dies, the only thing in his pocket will be a sheet of paper with calculations and observations about a grocery story. He thinks about how to the people that find him, it will mean nothing. He thinks to himself, “Contents of the dead man’s pockets, he thought with a sudden fierce anger, a wasted life.” (p 123) He realizes that he has wasted his life focusing on things that are not important.

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In the short story “That Room” by Tobias Wolff the room and what happens in it represents the realization the narrator has about how he has no control of his life. He wants a better life than the one he is living right now. He thrives for greatness in his life but he can only create that greatness in his mind. “I felt the actuality of a life I knew nothing about yet somehow contrived to want myself: a real life in a real world” (Wolff 269). The narrator in this story can’t really do anything about the life his living at the moment, he only wishes to do so.

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As Geyh argues in her essay, the window is the boundary of the house, which simultaneously separates and connects the inside and the outside (111). By turning the light on, it goes dark; “[f]unctioning as a mirror, it creates a circle of inwardness” (111). It sustains the illusion that what is inside is the only reality that exists, since the outside is no longer visible. The window then emerges as a separation tool from nature outside rather than a means of

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Howard is a well off actor who is dressed elegantly while his boyhood home is farm is much less elegant with many chores and tasks. After ten years he decides to visit his boyhood house and his family. In the beginning he is excited and feels good to be home. “He walked slowly to absorb the coolness and fragrance and color of the hour,” this quote from paragraph twenty five shows that Howard is feeling pleasant to be home. Further along his journey, he begins to see the house of his brother and new feelings swell up, “A sickening chill struck into Howard’s soul as he looked at it all.”

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In The Pigman by Paul Zindel, the character John Conlan’s philosophy on life is too irresponsible and selfish. John chooses to put himself first even if it’s at the expense of others. When he and Lorraine went to collect Mr. Pignati’s money for their “charity”, he said “‘I’ve been thinking, and I’ve decided we’d better go over and collect the ten bucks,’... ‘We’re not doing anything bad,’ I insisted. ”(36).

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In the short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, Flannery O’Connor’s goal is to teach her readers an important lesson. By presenting an exaggerated and flawed character, and through a peek into her life, she displays the consequences of many faults, but most importantly, the danger of a lack of self-awareness. By the end of the story, the main character, Grandmother, has had an epiphany, brought on by a traumatizing event. By giving them an outside view of the folly of her character, Flannery O’Connor hopes to warn her readers of following the same path that will inevitably lead to destruction in some way or another.

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Because Esperanza is capable of finding love as she says, the window acts as a device that she can direct her hope through. While fantasizing about a different life, “away from Mango Street”, Esperanza describes a house that she would find nice, a house with “flowers and big windows … [that] would swing open, all the sky [coming] in” (Cisneros 82). Esperanza isn’t content with her current life and wishes for a life with something more, a life with a house to call home. The windows that bring in the sky in Esperanza’s dream home act as a symbol for significance in life, the windows are big because they are part of Esperanza’s hopes that she has been dreaming of through windows and the sky coming in represents Esperanza being wild and free from the bounds of her current unsatisfactory environment. Windows symbolize the novel’s theme of struggling to attain a gratifying life by acting as an object for the characters to direct their hope

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He creates a playful tone towards the harsh environment described in the short story. He describes the lifelike house as if it were a simple minded living being. For example he gave the house features of repetition and used phrases like, “it repeated the date three times for memory 's sake!”. His choice of words are charming and lighthearted rather than unpleasant to the ear. He continues to use these such words throughout even when he begins to talk of the sick scene.

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