Themes

"No Name Woman"
I think the main theme of this story is collectivism and the effects of the pressures accompanying this societal idea. This woman became a "ghost" in her own family, her own village, and even in her own mind due to the peer pressure that she felt and had to endure. Her village and family looked at her as a disgrace and would treat her like one forever. They stormed her house and destroyed her belongings all because she had strayed from the cultural boundaries that these people base their lives on. She had gotten pregnant by a man who was not her husband and as if this would be hard enough to deal with on her own, she had no one to turn to and no one that would even look at her. She would have to go on living with these people who treated her as if she was not there and should not be there. This is where the roles of setting and point of view come into play.
This story took place in China, which is known for its collectivist ideas. It is a place where people are taught to sacrifice for the good of the group and to give up individual wants or selfish desires in order to benefit the society as a whole. The way this society is, and the way this particular village is, is what drove the people to attack her house and treat this woman as a ghost. The village was in need of food and this added to the already strict ideas that China enforces. Because she had a child who should not have been born, she would be taking food from a child who should have been, and this was not accepted. The timing of this story just made it all the worse for this woman.
The point of view from which this story is told also creates an interesting impact relating to the theme. The niece of this "no name woman" is narrating the story when she is an adult herself. She is looking back on how her mother recalled this story to her as a child. Her mother spoke to her of this event only as a warning to show what could happen if the girl was not careful. She spoke of this woman as a disgraceful, tainted woman and because the narrator was young when she heard the story, her mother's words influenced her. She did not even care to try to hear more about this woman because her mother said she should not be spoken of. This young girl was brought up by her mother with similar collectivist ideas and so she was trained to believe that this "no name woman" was the disgrace her mother described. However, as an adult narrating this memory, she has come up with some of her own ideas. She lives in America now, where collectivism is certainly not a strong societal theme. She has lived and experienced a completely different world filled with people who have completely different ideas on matters of life. This changed her opinion of her unspoken aunt and led her to write about her, despite the fact that she was never supposed to repeat the story. These different points of views and changes in settings are connected in creating this theme of collectivism, but also create an underlying theme of different societal values, not just collectivism.

"Becky"
The central theme that can be found in this story is fear of difference or defiant change. The people in this story, both black and white, were united in this fear of a woman who had strayed from the social norm and had twice committed such an act. She was a white woman who dared to have two sons of a black man. The time this story was written was 1923, which was not a time when interracial relationships was tolerated. This story takes place in an area with both black and white inhabitants, but neither race connected or associated with each other. They both had very similar ideas about how they felt about Becky though, and dealt with her presence in the same way. "Folks from the town took turns, unknown, of course, to each other, in bringing corn and meat and sweet potatoes." They both provided a place for Becky to live without fully acknowledging that she did in fact reside there, but they would never speak of who provided her with these means. The people in this story all had the same fear which stems from the time and place in which they lived. The idea of mixing races was unheard of, unspoken, and unacceptable. This fact was true for both races. The fact that the narrator's race is not revealed is important in this story, because this again shows, how similarly the two races' reactions were. It would not have mattered if this narrator was black or white because the narrator still provided the reader with the specific words and behaviors of both the white people and black people in the town when they were dealing with Becky. Also, it is told from the person in the story who actually saw Becky's house collapsed. This narrator actually was able to describe his fear at this very moment. This fear of Becky was really just a fear of what she represented- defiance, change, nonacceptance of societal norms and beliefs.