Thank You, M’am: Dialect 1 key example

The following passage, which comes near the beginning of the story after Roger’s failed mugging attempt, captures Hughes’s use of dialect:

[Mrs. Jones] still held him tightly. But she bent down enough to permit him to stoop and pick up her purse. Then she said, “Now ain’t you ashamed of yourself?”

Cite this Quote

Firmly gripped by his shirtfront, the boy said, “Yes’m.”

The woman said, “What did you want to do it for?”

The boy said, “I didn’t aim to.”

She said, “You a lie!”

In this passage, Hughes uses traditional spelling and grammar when writing the narration and then changes his writing style when Mrs. Jones and Roger speak. For example, Mrs. Jones says “ain’t” instead of “aren’t” when asking Roger if he is ashamed of himself, and Roger answers with “Yes’m,” a colloquial version of “Yes, m’am.” Similarly, instead of asking, “Why did you do it?” Mrs. Jones asks, “What did you want to do it for?” and, after Roger says he didn’t mean to do it, she says, “You a lie!” rather than “You’re a liar!”

While readers may read Mrs. Jones’s behavior here as punitive, they soon learn that she is not interested in punishing him at all, but in holding him accountable for his actions while also extending empathy and kindness (which she does by feeding him dinner and willingly giving him ten dollars from her purse). In a way, the fact that Mrs. Jones and Roger speak similarly helps the story strengthen the connection between them.