What is his conflict about?

Tom Benecke is all alone throughout most of the story. He sends his wife off to the movies so that he can work on a business report. Since he is all alone, his conflict is mainly an internal one, of the kind often categorized as "man against himself." He is torn between his desire to retrieve the paper that blows out the window and his fear of heights. He decides that getting the paper should be easy if only he doesn't look down. There is a streak of perversity in all of us. Tom knows he shouldn't look down, but he is tempted to do so just because he knows he shouldn't. Most people have had the experience of being on a very high place and feeling the temptation to jump. Maybe it's a death wish. Heights can be terrifying, but they can also be exhilarating. That may explain why so many people go in for rock climbing, mountain climbing, parachute jumping, bungee jumping, and other such dangerous sports. That may also explain why Jack Finney's story is still being read after so many years. We as readers share Tom's fear, but we are also vicariously enjoying the whole adventure. 

The story is told from Tom's point of view--but it is told in the third person by an anonymous narrator. The advantage of this form of story-telling is that we readers can share in Tom's emotions, but if he falls to his death on the pavement eleven floors below, we can remind ourselves that it's him, not us. The title of the story seems to imply that Tom is as good as dead when he decides to climb out on that ledge. We keep expecting him to fall and to have someone going through his pockets down below to find out who he is and perhaps determine whether it was suicide or an accident. The yellow sheet in his pocket won't help much because it is all written in his own private shorthand.

Tom succeeds in resisting the temptation to look down until he gets to the spot where his paper has become stuck. Then when he reaches down very awkwardly to get the tips of his fingers on the paper, he momentarily forgets about his determination to resist looking down. What follows is the best piece of writing in the whole story.

He saw, in that instant, the Loew’s theater sign, blocks ahead past Fiftieth Street; the miles of traffic signals, all green now; the lights of cars and street lamps; countless neon signs; and the moving black dots of people. And a violent instantaneous explosion of absolute terror roared through him.

After he has seen that sight he is nearly petrified. Eventually he forces himself to start creeping back towards his window. He never looks down again, but the spectacle he saw is imprinted in his mind, as if he were a camera and only needed a fraction of a second to snap a picture. The reader, of course, has seen the same picture and can understand how it would make it harder than ever for Tom to stay on that ledge clinging to edges of the bricks.

The internal conflict in “The Contents of the Dead Man’s Pocket” is far more important than the external conflict, which involves retrieving the yellow sheet of paper and getting back into his apartment though a window which refuses to open. Tom is not trying to conquer Mount Everest but only to conquer himself.