Thank You Ma Am, By Langston Hughes

Langston Hughes’ short story “Thank you ma’am” depicts the story of a boy that attempts to steal a purse but is stopped by the woman whom he tried to steal from. An interesting passage from the text is when the boy tries to take the purse but is instead stopped due to the weight of the purse, in which the woman proceeds to grab him. This passage is noteworthy because of Langston Hughes’ way of introducing diction and syntax to create an ambiguous tone for the rest of the passage. Another notable excerpt from the text is when the woman confronts the boy about his wrongdoing. This is significant as it gives us an overview of the characters and how they act. Overall these excerpts from the text reveal the theme of the story: Having dignity and trust.

In “Thank you, ma’am,” Langston Hughes conveys informal diction to expand the ambiguous tone in the story, putting the characters in the view of the reader. Examples of word choice that Langston implements in the passage are “large woman,” and “boys weight”(32). These word choices are used to describe the differences between the woman and the boy. The author's informal word choice is created to give the reader insight into the characters and how they are different from each other in many aspects. In relation to the

The syntax in the passage plays a role in understanding the characters and their backgrounds with the use of dialogue, which we can see through quotation marks. “Firmly gripped by his shirt front, the boy said, “Yes’m.” The woman said, “What did you want to do it for?” The boy said, “I didn’t aim to” (32). The punctuation on the word “Firmly” shows us that the woman was not enamored with the boy and was not going to mess around. The sentence length from the boy's responses shows us that he was most likely frightened by the “large