y life. I just listen to the story and allow myself to be entertained. I believe that’s the same with the characters in this story. I don’t think they learned anything. Even at the very end of the story when Mrs. Pike’s son, Billy Boy, runs out of the beauty parlor and yells “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?” I don’t think either Leota or Mrs. Fletcher even understood his point.I think Mrs. Fletcher did change however. At the beginning of the story it seemed that she was irate when she found out her pregnancy was the topic of discussion at the beauty parlor. “’Who was it?’ demanded Mrs. Fletcher.” By the end of the story, once they had talked about everything that had happened to Mrs. Pike and her husband, Mrs. Fletcher felt fine about talking about the pregnancy. “I guess I better learn how to spank little old bad boys,” as if once the attention was on someone else, she no longer cared about people talking about her pregnancy. Now, in fact, she was talking about it.Do you think the on going theme of the story is?I thought the theme of the story was jealousy. I started thinking about it as soon as Mrs. Fletcher started getting defensive once Leota told her about Mrs. Pike. The more Leota talked about her, the more defensive Mrs. Fletcher got. “Does she know everything about you already?” Then all of the sudden, once she found out that Leota and Mrs. Pike had had a falling out, everything was fine. As mentioned before, when Mrs. Fletcher found out Mrs. Pike was the one that told Leota Mrs. Fletcher was pregnant, she was outraged. Mrs. Pike was the one Leota talked to all the time now. She was the one who heard all the stories about everyone in town. She was Leota’s new confidant if you will. To prevent from slipping too far down on Leota’s friend list, Mrs. Fletcher kept asking questions about Mrs. Pike pre...
