Thank You, M'am

Roger is a skinny and nervous 14- or 15-year-old boy. His small size is in part a nod to his home life, which Hughes implies to be characterized by poverty, hunger, and neglect. Roger remarks, for instance, that he has no one to remind him to wash his face, which suggests that his parents are either absent or otherwise preoccupied. Regardless, his timid and deferential behavior speaks to a lack of self-worth and a deep-seated mistrust of others. Although Roger’s desire for a pair of blue suede shoes indicates that he wants more out of life, he doesn’t necessarily believe that he deserves more—or, at least, that anyone else will see him as deserving. It therefore never occurs to him to, as Mrs. Jones suggests, simply ask her for help.

However, Roger’s demeanor and attitude shifts throughout the story. The more Mrs. Jones treats him as a person worthy of respect and trust, the more he wants to repay her in kind; he offers to run an errand for her and goes out of his way to sit where she’ll be able to keep an eye on him, finding that he “[does] not want to be mistrusted now” (Paragraph 38). Symbolically, his compliance with Mrs. Jones’s request that he wash his face is also a turning point, marking both his desire to be morally “clean” and his willingness to take responsibility for himself. Although Roger’s relationship with Mrs. Jones is limited to this one interaction, the implication is that he leaves her apartment with a better sense of the respect he owes both to other people and to himself.