Thank You Ma'am Essay

The Influential People in Our Lives
Authors Note: This essay is about how influential Mrs. Jones is on Rodger in the story Thank You Ma’am by Langston Hughes.

Roger, an adolescent between the ages of thirteen and fifteen, lives on the streets and pickpockets for a living. He sees his target, Mrs. Jones, but more specifically her purse, which hopefully had just enough for some blue suede shoes. We have all read a story similar to this, but Rodgers story is different. Mrs. Jones influences him in a way that changed his life forever. In the story, Thank You Ma’am by Langston Hughes, you discover that people can be a huge influence on you and how you treat the others around you.

To influence someone means to be able to affect the development, behavior, or character of someone or something. Mrs. Jones heavily influenced Rodger late one evening when Rodger just happened to make the mistake of trying to steal the purse of Mrs. Jones. Instead of acting like most people would have by either calling the police or chasing after him, she turns the whole situation around by making Rodger the victim and not her. People can be influenced physically, emotionally, or mentally by the things or people around them. In this scenario, Mrs. Jones influenced him mentally by putting in his mind that if he tries to steal or pickpocket again she will make sure that he is thrown into jail.

While being able to influence people is one thing, what you do with them should be looked upon as well. Mrs. Jones is very audacious, because she lets Rodger into her house, cleans him up and then makes him some cocoa and gives him some of her 10 cent cake. When Mrs. Jones says, "I was young once and I wanted things I could not get." Rodger realizes that Mrs. Jones is showing that she can connect to Rodger and that she is showing him that there are better more honest things than trying to get what you want by stealing.

In addition, what you do with the person you influenced and the direction you influence them is an important topic also. Some people would have stereotyped Rodger and just told him to get lost or call the cops. However, Mrs. Jones went out of her way to help this kid out who she had never even met. All the things she did, making him wash his face, cooking him food, and giving him the 10 dollars to buy some shoes were not her original plans for the evening. She astutely handled the situation by making sure that she influenced him onto a path where pick pocketing and thievery are nonexistent.

The way people influence you and the way you treat others is clearly seen in the short story, Thank You Ma’am, and like Eleanor Roosevelt said, “You can never really live anyone else's life, not even your child's. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you've become yourself.”