4. Explain the significance of the following passage. Be sure to explain fully.
“He understood fully that he might actually be going to die; his arms, maintaining
his balance on the ledge, were trembling steadily now. And it occurred to him
then with all the force of a revelation that, if he fell, all he was ever going to have
out of life he would then, abruptly, have had. Nothing, then, could ever be
changed; and nothing more-no least experience or pleasure-could ever be added
to his life. 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. He thought wonderingly of his fierce
ambition and of the direction his life had taken; he thought of the hours he'd spent
by himself, filling the yellow sheet that had brought him out here. Contents of the
dead man's pockets, he thought with sudden fierce anger, a wasted life"(6-7).