In the story “Thank you Ma’am” by Langston Hughes, the boy starts off trying to steal a woman’s purse because he wanted to buy a shoe and he needs money. The woman got the boy trying to steal, but instead of getting mad at the boy, the woman understood the boy and led him to her house. The woman provided him food and water and treated him well, therefore, boy is very thankful. At the end of the story, the boy left the woman’s house he wanted to say “Thank you, ma’am” to her, but he didn’t say it. I think my poem shows the conflict because if the boy didn’t try to steal the woman’s purse, the woman wouldn’t be able to know the boy and the story wouldn’t be able to go on and continue. Also, this whole story is mostly talking about and explaining how the woman took care of the boy, and there wasn’t anything bad that happened to the women or the boy after paragraph one, so everything else was happy and enjoyable. I think this conflict is both external and internal conflict. This is an external conflict because it is character vs character which is the boy and the woman. The boy trying stealing the woman’s purse is the external conflict. For internal conflict, it is the boy vs himself because at the end of the story it says “The boy wanted to say something other than, “Thank you, m’am,” to Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones, but although his lips moved, he couldn’t even say that as he turned at the foot of the barren11 stoop and looked up at the large woman in the door.” The boy thought of saying thank you to the woman but he didn’t say it out loud at last, so that is a conflict on himself.
About the author: https://www.biography.com/writer/langston-hughes