Summary
There is a silent pause. Mrs. Jones continues, stating that she has also done things—things she doesn’t want to tell him or God, if God doesn’t already know. She tells Roger to sit down while she prepares them a meal. She adds that he could run a comb through his hair to look more presentable.
In a corner of the room are a gas plate and an icebox behind a screen. Mrs. Jones gets up and goes behind the screen. She doesn’t watch to see if Roger will run away. She also doesn’t watch her purse, which she leaves on the daybed.
Roger sits on the far side of the room, where he thinks Mrs. Jones can easily see him out of the corner of her eye, if she wants to. He does not “trust the woman not to trust him.” He doesn’t want to be mistrusted by her now.
Roger asks if she needs someone to go to the store to get milk or something. Mrs. Jones says she doesn’t believe she does, unless he wants sweet milk for himself. She says she was going to make cocoa out of the canned milk she has. Roger says that will be fine.
Mrs. Jones heats lima beans and ham that she has in the icebox. She makes the cocoa and sets the table. Mrs. Jones doesn’t ask Roger any personal questions about where he lives, who his parents are, or anything else that would embarrass him.
Instead, Mrs. Jones tells him, as they eat, about her job in a hotel beauty shop. She says it stays open late, and talks about what the work is like, and how all kinds of women come in and out: blondes, redheads, Spanish women. Mrs. Jones cuts Roger a half-portion of her ten-cent cake. She tells him to eat some more.
When they finish eating, Mrs. Jones gets up and gives Roger ten dollars from her purse. She tells him to take it and buy some blue suede shoes. She tells him that next time, he is not to make the mistake of trying to steal her purse or anybody else’s. She says that shoes that come to him from devilish deeds like purse-snatching will burn his feet.
She says she has to get her rest now. She says she wishes he would behave himself from here on in. She leads him down the hall to the front door, which she opens for him. As he leaves, she tells him to behave himself and wishes him goodnight.
Roger wants to say something other than “Thank you, m’am,” but he finds he cannot say anything when he turns on the barren stoop and looks back at the large woman in the door.
He barely manages to say “Thank you” before Mrs. Jones shuts the door. The story ends with the narrator commenting that Roger never sees her again.
Analysis
Mrs. Jones continues to gain Roger’s trust through empathizing with his poverty and desperation. She explains that she, like him, has done things she would rather not talk about—things so shameful she wouldn’t want God to know. Mrs. Jones’s honesty is a testament to the generosity of her spirit, and her behavior continues to disarm Roger, making him finally relax in her presence.
The theme of generosity builds with Mrs. Jones’s decision to share her dinner with Roger, and Roger politely sits and waits in her “kitchenette” apartment as she prepares the meal. The style of apartment would have been common in Harlem, New York—likely where the story is set. Because of a quickly rising population, landlords divided up large buildings in Harlem to rent to more individuals. The kitchenette apartment Mrs. Jones lives in likely comprises one room with a simple kitchen in one corner and a bathroom shared with other lodgers in the house. This detail in the story signals that Mrs. Jones is, like Roger, living in relative poverty, despite having a job at a hotel.
Separating her modest kitchen area from the rest of the room is a room divider. When Mrs. Jones goes behind the screen, Roger understands that he has been left alone with her purse. He knows he could steal it and run out the door, but Roger is sure to sit where she can see him. In this way, Hughes shows how the trust Mrs. Jones extends to Roger makes him want to prove himself worthy of her trust. He continues to try to ingratiate himself with the kind stranger, offering to pick up milk from the store.
Over a meal of lima beans and ham, Mrs. Jones tells Roger about the service-industry work she does at the hotel beauty salon. The theme of dignity comes up again when the narrator comments on how Mrs. Jones makes sure not to ask Roger any questions about his absent parents or his living situation: she is cautious not to make him feel ashamed of the circumstances from which he comes. The easy intimacy the two share in the scene presents yet another instance of situational irony: most readers might forget at this point in the story that only minutes earlier Roger tried to steal Mrs. Jones’s purse.
Hughes ends “Thank You Ma’am” with Mrs. Jones’s generous decision to give Roger ten dollars to buy a pair of blue suede shoes. The shoes symbolize the consumer-driven aspirations Roger has, and she knows he cannot afford the shoes by honest means. She warns him that if he did buy shoes using stolen money, the remorse he would feel would be so strong that it would be as though the shoes were burning his feet.
Overwhelmed by the woman’s unexpected generosity—and the unexpected turn the entire evening has taken—Roger tries to summon up the ability to say more than a simple thank you. However, he barely gets the words out before the woman closes the door, never to be seen by Roger again. Mrs. Jones's unsentimental exit from the scene implies that the generosity she has shown Roger that night is nothing out of the ordinary for her—perhaps Roger is one of many would-be thieves she has brought home to feed and speak with. However, her lessons on trust, dignity, and generosity are likely to have an outsized impact on Roger’s life. As she warns early in the story, his decision to come into contact with her will last a while.
