Thank You, M'am: Main Ideas

You can’t judge a person by appearances.

“Thank You, Ma’am” is a story of surprise from its opening moment of a thwarted robbery. Mrs. Jones surprises both Roger and the reader with her response to being robbed and the revelations she provides about her life. At first glance, Mrs. Jones is a stock character of the tired woman taken advantage of by a thief who catches her unaware. However, she is far from the passive victim of that cliché, but rather a force to be reckoned with, something Roger learns by underestimating her. Even more surprising is her maternal compassion toward Roger. Rather than seeking to punish him, she responds to his attack by insisting on caring for him, taking him to her home, making him clean his face and hair, and sharing her supper.

This generosity seems like pure altruism until she reveals that her own youth was not unlike his, a time when she could not get what she wanted and therefore committed acts she is now ashamed of. Roger is dumbfounded by the idea that this upright woman once engaged in bad deeds, but the idea that she sees a reflection of her past self in Roger reveals the motivation behind the kindness she shows him. By the end of the story, after she has given him money to buy the shoes he wants, Mrs. Jones appears as an entirely different and richer character than she did in the story’s opening scene.

Children need care at home.

Mrs. Jones’s treatment of Roger clearly indicates that she believes children need care at home. Although Mrs. Jones responds fiercely to Roger’s attack, after she has caught hold of him and made him pick up her purse, she turns almost immediately to interrogating him about his life at home, asking if he doesn’t have someone to tell him to wash his face. The immediacy of this question shows how valuable Mrs. Jones believes care at home is for children. Where others may see a thief deserving of punishment, Mrs. Jones correctly sees a child who lacks care and guidance. Mrs. Jones intuits that there is no one at home to encourage Roger to make himself look presentable or feed him supper. As she provides the maternal care he so desperately needs to flourish, Roger reveals a desire to be trustworthy as he sits in an observable place and complies with each of Mrs. Jones’s instructions. This abrupt shift in Roger’s behavior illustrates that he is not a criminal but a child in need of care and compassion.

Mrs. Jones’s dinner with Roger is a demonstration of the kind of care she recognizes he lacks at home. She firmly commands him to wash his face, but after that, she is generous and warm toward him. She feeds him well and speaks kindly, avoiding subjects that may cause him embarrassment and revealing that she, too, committed acts in her youth that she is ashamed of. What she has she shares with him, as a mother would. When she cuts her cake in half to share, she urges him to eat more and calls him son, revealing that her generosity is a form of maternal care. This care does, in fact, transform Roger. The boy who begins the story attacking Mrs. Jones ends the story so overflowing with gratitude that he can hardly choke out his thanks.

Bad deeds do not permanently define character.

Among the lessons Mrs. Jones teaches Roger is that bad deeds do not define a person’s character. At the beginning of the story, Roger’s attack on Mrs. Jones seems to define him as a criminal. However, even though Mrs. Jones is angered by his attempt to steal her purse, she focuses on his potential for redemption. By taking him to her home and directing him to wash his face, she gives him a chance to change his role from attacker to surrogate son. Rather than define him by his behavior, Mrs. Jones sees Roger’s potential to lead a good, respectable life. By welcoming him into her life and revealing her past misdeeds, Mrs. Jones provides herself as an example to Roger that bad deeds do not permanently define character.

Mrs. Jones knows from personal experience that bad deeds do not permanently define character. By the time she encounters Roger, Mrs. Jones seems to be a very respectable woman: she has steady work at a department store and neat living quarters, and she carries herself with aplomb. When Roger admits he attempted to steal from her to get a pair of blue suede shoes, rather than castigate him for stealing for such a trivial reason, she provides a personal anecdote that reveals she can relate to his motivations. Further, Mrs. Jones reveals she is now ashamed of this behavior to illustrate the power of learning from past mistakes. This moment shocks Roger, suggesting that he cannot imagine a woman like Mrs. Jones doing anything bad. However, Mrs. Jones’s bad deeds in her youth do not permanently define her character, and she aims to show Roger that his current actions do not permanently define him.

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