Greed: Wish and Current Land Holdings

Making bad decisions is a part of life and unfortunately bad choices can lead to very poor outcomes. In the Stories How Much Does a Man Need, Contents in the Dead Mans Pockets, and The Monkeys Paw, Tom Beneke, Pahom, and Mr. White all make really poor choices , unfortunately because of deaths relating to bad decisions, two of the characters will never learn from their mistakes. Pahom was a hard working farmer, who just wasn’t happy with his current land holdings. He became too greedy with his desires for owning a bigger piece of land. Pahom sold his current piece of land, which he already had a lot of; to seek a new and immense piece of land, as much as he could acquire by walking it in a day. When Pahom got to the reservation, which a man had told him about, he had secured a deal to get as much as he could by walking the land. It’s a shame that Pahom ignored a dream he had the night before the deal would take place. He had a dream that he was on the ground laying dead with the devil standing over him. The vision Pahom had was a sure sign that the deal he made would kill him, but he still continued to secure the land deal by walking very early in the morning until sun down. It was obvious that Pahom got to greedy for land and did not pay any attention to the signs in his dream. So in the end, Pahom paid the ultimate price for his land. In death, he got as much land as he needed, six feet from head to toe and six feet under. Tom Benecke on the other hand made a bad choice however, he actually learned from it. Tom was supposed to go to the movies with his wife except, he decided to finish his project for work that would just make him look good and noticed by the boss, unfortunately it would not provide him a raise, promotion or anything else. Then his project flew out the window and then he decided to go chase after it on the ledge of the eleventh floor of a building and almost fell a few times. It’s apparent that Tom needed to get his priorities