54 pages • 1 hour read
Jack FinneyContents of the Dead Man's Pocket
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1956A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Yellow Paper
Tom’s yellow sheet of paper is the major symbol in the story. On it he scribbled all the information he compiled during countless hours spent completing a project that he hopes will impress his boss. Working evenings and during lunch for weeks, Tom focused his life entirely on adding more data to the single sheet of yellow paper. His project is “[an] idea for a new grocery store display method” (22), and without those notes, his idea would lack substantiation. Tom hopes that impressing his boss will lead to continual advancement in his company until he reaches the top. At the beginning of the story, the yellow paper symbolizes Tom’s overriding ambition to succeed.
The yellow paper also symbolizes Tom’s relationship with Clare. Every evening hour he spends scribbling notes is an hour he could have spent with her. Sending Clare to the movies alone and staying home to type his notes into a memo for his boss is a continuation of how Tom is choosing to live. He loves Clare, but he sacrifices their time together, never considering her feelings. Completely fixated on his work, Tom is unaware that by essentially abandoning Clare, he denies them both companionship and joy in life.
The symbolism of the yellow paper is most significant in the story’s conclusion. Trapped on the ledge and facing death, Tom draws the paper from his pocket and reviews how he has been living: “He wished, then, that he had not allowed his wife to go off by herself tonight—and on similar nights. He thought of all the evenings he had spent away from her, working; and he regretted them” (29). Tom remembers “all the hours he’d spent by himself, filling the yellow sheet” (29), and in a moment of insight, he recognizes what the paper most significantly symbolizes: “a wasted life” (30). The symbolism of the yellow paper supports and develops the story’s theme of consuming ambition, its final ironic flight out the window reflects Tom’s changed priorities.
Light Versus Darkness
Light and darkness figure significantly in the story, and the contrast between them represents the contrast between safety and danger. Light and darkness are introduced as motifs early in the text: Tom and Clare’s apartment is well lighted as he prepares to type a memo and she dresses to go to the movies; beyond the apartment’s window lies the darkness of an autumn night in New York City. In retrieving his yellow paper, Tom moves back and forth between light and darkness and what they represent.
After leaving the apartment and climbing out on the ledge, Tom shuffles sideways to reach the paper, caught at a corner of the ledge. Moving away from the window, he becomes acutely aware of the dark night: “his lighted apartment was suddenly gone, and it was much darker out here than he had thought” (23). The darkness is relieved only by the lights he sees in apartment windows across the street and by what he observes on Lexington Avenue far below him: the Loew’s theater sign and “the miles of traffic signals, all green now; the lights of cars and street lamps; countless neon signs” (24). The lights in the distance emphasize the darkness and danger that surround Tom, alone on the ledge.
After retrieving the yellow paper and returning to his apartment window, Tom crouches on the ledge in the darkness, his face pressed against the lighted window glass. Looking through the window into his living room, he sees the furnishings that make the apartment a comfortable haven for him and Clare. Breaking the window with his fist, Tom plunges into the room, moving from darkness and danger into light and safety.
Physical and Mental Strength
Physical strength is a motif woven throughout the story. A tall, slender young man, Tom is physically strong and possesses good physical coordination and balance. When he first steps outside his apartment window, he faces the building and “balance[s] easily and firmly” (23) on the ledge. He maintains his balance by first gripping the edge of the window and then the indentations between the bricks with his fingers, and he moves along the ledge “on the balls of his feet, heels lifted slightly” (23). As he moves, Tom can “feel his balance firm and secure” (23). Through physical strength, he reaches the corner and retrieves the yellow paper; his strength fails him, however, after seeing Lexington Avenue below: “The strength was gone from his legs; his shivering hands—numb, cold, and desperately rigid—had lost all deftness; his easy ability to move and balance was gone” (25). Tom subsequently overcomes the challenge to his physical strength. He makes his way back to the window and, summoning “every last scrap of strength” (30), he breaks the glass.
Tom’s mental strength is also a motif, and it plays an essential role in his survival. Despite being in extreme danger as he moves along the ledge, he concentrates “his entire mind on first his left foot, then his left hand, then the other foot, then the other hand” (26). When panic threatens to overwhelm him, he suppresses the fear by emptying his mind or by imagining scenes in which he is safe. He has a “sudden mental picture of his apartment on just the other side of this wall—warm, cheerful, incredibly spacious” (26)—and sees himself in it. Mentally, he watches as Clare comes home and rescues him. Tom’s mental strength fails at one point when fear “course[s] through his nerves and muscles” (26), but he soon overcomes this momentary panic, regaining control of his mind and devising the plan that saves his life.
Together, the motifs of Tom’s physical and mental strength demonstrate some of his best traits and emphasize the development of his character after he places himself in mortal danger. They also contribute to the story’s suspense as Tom physically and mentally struggles to survive.
