Thank You Ma'am

This is a point of view piece for the short story “Thank You Ma’am.”

In “Thank You Ma’am”, there is a boy about fifteen years old, who tries to steal a lady’s purse so then she takes him under her wing and turns him into a nice loving young man. The story is written in the narrator’s point of view. From this perspective, a lot of events and characters are described in a way that creates tension and build in the reader about the boy for insistence will he stay of will he try to run or will he never listen and be bad the rest of his life or will his life be changed by this lady’s actions..

One way that the narrator’s point of view influences the reader's interpretation is how this perspective describes nothing which makes you want to read on even more faster than you ever can or ever will be able too. Especially when more towards the end of the book it says that the door is open and he has a chance to make a run for it while the lady isn’t looking but he stays instead of taking his freedom. Also you know that he turns good and has turned around his act when he asks the lady if he can go out and by her some milk and bread which means that he has turned his act around by not snatching poor old lady’s purses and is now doing good deeds.

However, the reader would feel a lot differently about the outcome of the story if the novel was written in the point of view of the fifteen year old boy. For instance, the reader wouldn't react differently when he tried to take the lady’s purse.

As you can see, the point of view of a story forces the reader to see just one side of an event or topic. In “Thank You Ma’am”, the narrator's perspective makes the reader feel like the boy is a no good rotten punk but really he was just hungry and needed clothing and a good parent and a roof over his head to make him better. In the end the narrator’s point of view makes him a new man but you never know if the lady had ever turned him loose what other trouble he could have gotten himself into.