Friday, June 20, 2008

Why doesn't Roger run way from Mrs. Jones's apartment at the first opportunity in "Thank You M'am"?

Roger is stunned into obedience by Mrs. Jones’s unusual behavior and chooses not to run away.


I think that the reason Roger doesn’t run immediately is that he is so surprised by Mrs. Jones’s actions.  Roger doesn’t seem like a hardened criminal, so he was probably really nervous about the purse snatching.  It did not go as planned.  He definitely did not expect the woman whose purse he tried to snatch to snatch him instead.



“If I turn you loose, will you run?” asked the woman.


“Yes’m,” said the boy.


“Then I won’t turn you loose,” said the woman. She did not release him.



Mrs. Jones takes Roger home with her, basically dragging him behind her.  She tells him that once you make contact with her, that contact is going to last.  If he was her son, she would teach him right from wrong.  Roger is still completely baffled by the experience.  He set out to rob a woman, and she took him home.


Once Roger is in her home, he still doesn’t really know what he is going to do.  He is a little frightened of her, and curious too.



“Then, Roger, you go to that sink and wash your face,” said the woman, whereupon she turned him loose—at last. Roger looked at the door—looked at the woman—looked at the door—and went to the sink.



Hughes emphasizes the fact that Roger thought about it and then decided to wash his face.  The sink was really the first chance he would have had to run away, and he chose not to. This was the first time in a while, perhaps, that someone had taken an interest in him and tried to take care of him.  Besides, Mrs. Jones seems like a tough lady.  Who knows what she would do to him if he tried to run away now?

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