an animal, who wakes up to hunt for something to fill up his stomach and that’s all.

Roger was thankful for the way Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones treated him.

To Roger, Mrs. Jones was merely a target whose purse he wanted to snatch. But instead of taking him to the police station, she takes him to her home. She starts chiding him as a mother would her mischievous son. She gives him a fresh towel and asks him to wash himself clean. Then she cooks him something to eat and both of them eat together. She doesn’t ask any question about his personal life that would embarrass him. Instead she puts him at ease by touching upon her past life.

When she learns that he had attempted to run away with her bag to buy a pair of suede shoes, Mrs. Jones gives him ten dollars to buy those shoes. And before she sees him off, she warns him, like a mother, to not do anything that’s unethical.

Roger seems to be overwhelmed with a tremendous sense of gratitude. But he is unable to articulate his feelings and all that he could mutter was just “Thank you, ma’m.”

Ten dollars, food, comb and towel were not just the things he was thankful for. He was thankful for the motherly affection that Mrs Jones had treated him with. Nobody had ever scolded him for being so dirty and disheveled. In fact nobody had actually bothered about how he looked. He was thankful for she understood that he was hungry. He didn’t remember if anybody had ever asked him if he wanted to eat something. Roger was also thankful to her when she said, “You could have asked me” for money to buy shoes instead of attempting to snatch her purse. He knew he wasn’t her son or anybody so close to her that he had this natural right to assert his wish to her. He was deeply touched by the warmth of affection he experienced by this particular statement of hers. Last but not the least, he was thankful for she gave him ten dollars to buy shoes even though he didn’t ask for it.

To Mrs Jones, Roger was thankful for everything she said to him and everything she did for him. Most importantly, he was thankful to her for the way she did all these things - just like a mother, like someone to whom his well being really mattered.

Roger’s goal was to get a new pair of blue suede shoes.

I know it sounds like an Elvis song, but that what was what Roger wanted! He tried to steal a woman’s purse to pay for the blue suede shoes. The problem is that he chose the wrong target. He chose a woman who was much tougher than he was.

Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones does not give up her purse. She tackles Roger and brings him home with her so that she can wash his face and give him something to eat. She also wonders what he was doing out at 11 o’clock at night not having eaten.

“Then we’ll eat,” said the woman, “I believe you’re hungry—or been hungry—to try to snatch my pockekbook.”

“I wanted a pair of blue suede shoes,” said the boy.

Mrs. Jones tells him that if he wanted new shoes he just had to ask her for them, instead of trying to steal her pocketbook. She is an unusual woman. She seems to care about Roger even though she doesn’t know him and he tried to rob her.

After a while she said, “I were young once and I wanted things I could not get.” There was another long pause. … The woman said, “Um-hum! You thought I was going to say but, didn’t you? You thought I was going to say, but I didn’t snatch people’s pocketbooks. Well, I wasn’t going to say that.”

Mrs. Jones tells Roger that she has done things she is not proud of. She understands where he is coming from. Even if she doesn’t know him, she knows his circumstances. He is lonely and neglected, and obviously misguided. She wants him to understand that you can make a bad choice and learn from it. This decision does not have to define his life.

Hughes seems to want readers to know that Roger is a human being with many different elements that make up his identity; he isn't just some thief who robs women of their purses at night. When Mrs. Jones asks him if he has anybody at home "to tell [him] to wash [his] face," he says that he does not. In this way, we learn that, though he is only fourteen or fifteen years old, he doesn't seem to be getting much guidance from someone who looks after him because he may not actually have someone to look after him. When Mrs. Jones asks him, later, if he's had dinner yet, he explains, "There's nobody home at my house," and so she feeds him (after making him wash his face). This helps to evoke our sympathy for Roger, a young man who has not had the benefit of a mentor or guide in his life.

Further, the narrator explains that, even when Mrs. Jones turns her back—watching neither the door nor her purse— Roger takes care to sit "on the far side of the room" where she could "easily see him out of the corner of her eye." The reason he does this is that "he did not want to be mistrusted now." He's a good boy, a sweet boy, who even offers to run to the store for Mrs. Jones, and he is astonished and grateful when she feeds him and gives him the ten dollars he'd wanted for a pair of blue suede shoes. Hughes seems to want readers to understand that appearances can deceive and that people are not always what they seem.