Literary Analysis Of 'Thank You Mam'

Improved Essays
Register to read the introduction… On the first paragraph we get to know Roger, he is obviously not a very large or a strong man, nor very skilled in the art of stealing purses. This depicts his size and inexperience as a criminal. He lives along as we know, when he replays Mrs Luella that he gets nobody home. A dirty boy dressed in blue jeans and tennis shoes. An honest person he answers “Yes”, when Mrs Luella asks him if he is going to run, and that he needs money to buy a pair of blue suede shoes. He wants to be trusted, when he sits away from the purse (p. 165 the second paragraph).
Mrs Luella Bates Washington Jones, we get closer her in the beginning of the story, especially in the first paragraph, when the author gives a description which makes her seems strong, confident and unafraid of the night, not only a large woman. She lives in a flat with other roomers, but we do not know about her family. She works late in a hotel’s beauty shop. Mrs Luella shows the compassion for the boy, she does not take him to the police, even though he attempts her purse. She is presented as an active and dominant

Related Documents

  • Great Essays

    She Carries A Gun

    • 1244 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Her exposure sets the tone of vulnerability. Subsequently, while presenting herself as careful and cautious you can feel a sentiment of contempt through her writing while picturing her sleuthing her way to her “car like an Indian scout.” The reader’s suspicions are corroborated when she affirms that as a female it was her duty to be more cautious. Contemptuous as the author may seem, it does not derail her plight to justify her choice to carry her pistol. It gives justification as it appeals to her female audience who may be able to sympathize with her feelings.…

    • 1244 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Reading the first four chapters of this book has really told me a lot about Lutie as a woman and a mother. She constantly and with no regret keeps her son in mind with every decison she made. Her entire world revolves around her son Bub. On page 19, when she was contemplating whether or not she was going to take the apartment, she says, "You can sit down and twiddle your thumbs while your kid gets a free education from your father's blowsy girl friend. Or you can take this apartment.".…

    • 164 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Lucy Honeychurch Quotes

    • 284 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Lucy Honeychurch is a very quiet young lady, who rarely speaks her mind. This is due in part to her fear that she will misspeak and offend someone with no intention of doing so. Even though she has a lot of freedom in Italy with her companion Charlotte, she is too cautious and shy to grasp all of the opportunities she is presented at first. Even though she does not express herself through her words, she certainly reveals her emotions through her piano playing. She does not simply hit the right notes to play a song; instead she plays certain works of music to show her feelings, both good and bad.…

    • 284 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Great Essays

    Ann Petry, the author of The Street a Novel, does a fantastic job of setting up the overall feeling of the book in the first chapter, by utilizing detailed descriptions and comparisons as well as personifying ‘a cold November wind’ in an interesting way. The dictionary defines personification as “the attribution of human nature or character to animals, inanimate objects, or abstract notions, especially as a rhetorical figure” (Dictionary.com). In this particular instance, the wind is a blockade for Lutie, the main character, in her goals at the very beginning of the novel. On top of being a blockade for Lutie, the November winds are foreshadowing a lot of the themes in the novel; nothing is easy for her especially in regards to relationships and financial status throughout the rest of the novel. The wind “even blew her eyelashes away from her eyes so that her eyeballs were bathed in a rush of coldness and she had to blink in order to read the words on the sign swaying back and forth,” (Petry 2) the wind is activley attempting to prevent her from even determining exactly where she is, it’s hard to even get started if she doesn’t know where she’s going.…

    • 1909 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Has an adult ever helped you in your life as a teen? This can happen in both fictional stories and in real life. We read 4 stories about adults helping teens. Thank You Ma’am by: Langston Hughes, about a boy with a bad home life when a stranger helps him. The Drummer Boy of Shiloh by: Ray Bradbury, about a scared drummer boy in a battle.…

    • 730 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Roger was described as a clothier ( Someone who sells men's clothing. ) Rogers' father taught him the trade of shoemaking. Roger only went to the common country schools. That was the only education he got as a child. In June 1743, Roger and his family moved to New Milford.…

    • 779 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In a Rogerian argument one needs to explain the problem at hand, express the opposing views, and understand why they think such a way. In Willy’s essay she states the problem by first using an anecdote to let the readers know that she does have experience on the problem first hand, by using the anecdote she communicates to her audience that she is a reliable source because she elucidates on how she is not blindly talking about a subject she has no knowledge about, which prevents the readers from losing interest in her argument. The purpose of a rogerian argument is…

    • 1156 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    By refusing to read her mother’s letters, Lucy attempts to serve her correspondence and therefore her relationship with her mother. It is clear that Lucy cannot separate from her mother because she keeps all the letters instead of destroying them. Lucy carries the letters from her family inside her brassiere and describes them as “scorching her breasts” (20). The word “scorning” indicates that those letters that her mother writes to her has become attached to her body and that her mother is part of her. The letters can be seen as a metaphor for her mother and also her homeland that Lucy wished to detach herself from, but at the same time cannot bear to do so.…

    • 709 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Fish Cheeks

    • 830 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Embarrassed and hiding her face, Amy Tan struggles to accept herself during an excruciating dinner her mother had set up with an american family. The lesson she was taught here is one she will come to remember for a long time. This story, Fish Cheeks, by Tan shines a light on the idea that parents lessons are better learned through austerity. Kids will remember the moments in life where they felt strong emotions, like anger, embarrassment, and shame. Kids remember lessons through thoughts and feelings, and getting a harsh lesson from a parent is always remembered.…

    • 830 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The author showed that the mother was an awful parent and she didn 't really care for where her children were staying. Finally when she put that the child was suspended from school for fighting at school and stabbed a child ,completed it and made perfect sense that the job of parenting was lacking. The author then displaces the boys life to and the people around him to make a strong point for the use of…

    • 786 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    People have been exploited for centuries and the situations in The Street by Ann Petry are no different. In the novel, the main character Lutie Johnson and her son, Bub, live on 116th Street in Harlem, New York, during the 1940s. Throughout the novel she intends to earn a sufficient amount of money to move to a more secure neighborhood. During her struggles she encounters clever and dangerous people who attempt to prevent her from reaching her goal. Lutie’s escalating frustration at being walled in is released at the end of the novel when she murders a man, flees to Chicago, and leaves Bub behind to face reform school.…

    • 1246 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Ann Petry's The Street

    • 1604 Words
    • 7 Pages

    Life of an African American During the Harlem Renaissance During the Harlem Renaissance, racial discrimination was prevalent against African Americans. In Ann Petry’s novel, The Street, Lutie Johnson and other minor subjects are greatly affected by their surroundings in Harlem. Lutie Johnson is an important symbol of her novel because she shows the struggle of raising a son in the midst of a poverty-stricken area dealing with an African American life.…

    • 1604 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Lady In Red Analysis

    • 518 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Although four out of every five people seem, lost all humanity in todays world, Richard LeMieux shows that one person who still has their humanity through his humbiling experience. The purpose of LeMieux’s excerpt “The Lady In Red” serves to illustrate to the reader a world in which people contain no desire to even help out an unfortunate man on the street and he successfully persuades the reader of this horror mainly through pathos appeal. LeMieux and his dog Willow find themselves in a rough situation and must resort to begging on the streets. The author explains, whenever LeMieux runs into less fortunate people when wealthy, he, most of the time, gave some money, even if he knew they lied and made up fake stories. LeMieux learned the hard way, the cold truth of humanity and the absence of generousity.…

    • 518 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    This provokes thought about human nature to change oneself for another. How can one be safe and feel at home in a relationship if one has to play a different part other than themselves? By questioning this, the narrator becomes a character taken over by self-doubt and…

    • 742 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    He is known to be an educated man who had studied in school and learned the art of medicine. This is what the townspeople perceived by him as he walked through the village. Over time, however, Roger is…

    • 1210 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays