The theme the short stories "Kate the Great" by Meg Cabot and "Thank you, Ma'am" by Langston Hughes is to show sympathy towards others, no matter the circumstances you know them in. "When they were finished eating she got up and said, 'Now, here, take this ten dollars and buy yourself some blue suede shoes.'" Firstly, this quote from "Thank you, Ma'am" shows that Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones took a sort of pity on the boy that tried to steal her purse when she saw the condition he was in. She could tell he didn't have many nice things and took pity on him, giving him a small amount of money to help him out. "And just like that, I stopped hating Kate...well, in spite of what she'd done to me, making me lose my first babysitting job and
