In the book, The Other Wes Moore, Wes Moore discusses several topics that are relevant in today’s society, such as crime, race, teenage pregnancy, and family. In the book, Wes Moore describe two peoples’ fate and their upbringing on the streets of the Bronx and how with little to no parental support, a child cannot grow up and become successful. Wes vividly depicts the parallels between his life and the other Wes Moore life. Wes Moore, grew up in a loving, caring household, and yet- the streets of the Bronx were taking over his life. Wes was skipping school, spray painting, and he was leading his life down the wrong path. Wes showed us through this book how his life could have been through the “other” Wes Moore, whose life did lead down that …show more content…
Military school straighten Wes out to where he turned a new leaf over for his life and was set on the straight and narrow, whereas, the other Wes continue to sell drugs and get caught up in a life of crime which, eventually landed him in jail. For the both Wes Moore’s, they have seen how badly drugs and gang violence had come and took over the neighborhood. Given that Wes Moore had the support of his family and community, they provided a positive impact on his life. He is the product of an environment of where if people expect you to succeed, you succeed, and he became very successful in his life and is spending a life sentence in jail. The other Wes Moore had little to no support system when it came to his upbringing. As much as Tony tried to straighten him out, Wes was consumed by what he didn’t have and knowing how he can get it. He is the product of his environment, where if people expected you to fail, you failed. Even when he tried to straighten out his life, the system failed him, basically forcing him back into the drug …show more content…
In the book, Wes make one bad decision after the next and Mary has stayed quiet about Wes’s actions and bad decision. With Mary playing the role as a permissive parent, she has sealed Wes fate and without a strong parental guidance, Wes was left to fend on his own and he was clearly not mature enough to make the right decisions for himself. , in a study performed by School of Social Work at Arizona State University, they found that “children as young as 4 years old tend to internalize problems more” when they’re exposed to permissive parenting. There is a strong possibility that if Mary have played a more active role in Wes’s life that he would have turned out differently. If Mary had interfered at any these important events, she could have made an impact on Wes and his future decision-making process and he would of possibly lead a different
In chapter 5 of The Other Wes Moore, It is 5.30 am, and Moore is awoken by aloud shouts telling him to get out of his “racks.” His roommate urges him to get up and is but Moore tells him that he’ll wait until 8. As his roommate leaves, Moore is left confused about the situation he’s found himself in. First Sergeant Anderson enters the room and begins screaming and cursing at Moore in an unfamiliar language. Anderson then starts smiling before leaving Moore’s rack. Moore explains that this is his first morning at military school, which Joy has sent him to after he was put on academic and disciplinary probation at Riverdale. On the same day as he receives the news of probation, Moore is sitting next to Shani at home, punching her arm out of boredom.
In the book Discovering Wes Moore, written by Wes Moore, we see how life is a path and every decision alters your course. Throughout this book we see Wes Moore trying to uncover his identity through the chaos of his surroundings. He has to decide what’s right and what’s easy are two different things. Wes Moore has lived his life always moving, always used to change.
Like Joy, Mary went to university to help her family’s situation and had Tony and Wes at a young age. Her mother, Alma died when she was 16, shortly after Mary had Tony, due to her kidney failure transplant. Mary was married to Bernard, an alcoholic, and ended up leaving him. About eight months after they had Wes, Bernard was banging on their front door late at night. On page 24 it says, “Bernard continued to bang and scream. He stood the other side of the door in faded jeans and plain white T-shirt, his beard scruffy and his eyes bloodshot.” He was trying to see his son, but Mary just peered at him, disgusted. Finally, he left their front door, and it was the last time he tried to see his son. Mary was a hardworking, and independent mother who took care of two children by
The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore follows two boys, with the same name, growing up in similar environments, and how they end up where they are today. One of them is a “Rhodes Scholar, decorated veteran, White House Fellow, and business leader”, while the other one is in prison for murder. The author’s central argument is that the choices an individual makes will dictate their future.
For instance, Wes Moore spends many of his early years living in the Bronx, NY with his grandparents, mother, and sisters, while the other Wes Moore never leaves Baltimore. In spite of the fact that Wes Moore is sent off to Valley Forge military school in Pennsylvania after not taking his private school seriously, his mother’s dedication for the welfare of her family was the reason he made it out of the streets. This let Wes Moore explore his capabilities, and figure out his purpose in life, something that the other Wes Moore would not get the chance to do. The drastic change that Wes Moore went through was a very hard time for him, but it would prove better for him in the long run. He expressed, "I knew my mom was considering sending me away, yet I never thought she'd actually do it" (87). Although this transition to military school was extremely difficult at first, Wes Moore was able to find his identity. As time progressed and he began to realize that he was not going home anytime soon, he learned that he was going to have to make the best of his situation. While Wes Moore was in military school, he expressed, "That's when I started to understand that I was in a different environment. Not simply because I was in the middle of Pennsylvania instead of the Bronx or Baltimore. It was a different psychological environment, where my normal expectations were inverted, where leadership was honored and class clowns were ostracized" (Moore
New York’s bestseller The other Wes Moore, by Wes Moore is a story of how two kids with similar backgrounds including similar names ended up with different outcomes in life. The author Wes Moore ended with a degree from Oxford University and an internship at the white house while the other Wes More got sentenced to life in prison for the murder of an off duty police officer. The book goes into detail on why they ended up so differently and it turns out that it could have been a number of life changing events and choices. However Malcolm Gladwell who wrote the book Outliers, would argue that it may have been a result of external factors that would contribute to the success of the author and the eventual fall of the other Wes Moore. For the purpose of this paper we will address the author as either Moore or the author Wes Moore and the other Wes Moore as Weston.
The book The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore, is a story of loss, regret and childhood innocence. These ideas are reinforced by the iconic lines, “The chilling truth is that his story could have been mine. The tragedy is that my story could have been his.” This idea of how temperamental and volatile life is, is shown through the slow blurring of good and bad within the wes’. This book shows that a person’s entire outlook and trajectory in life can be changed with a few small decisions.
In the Other Wes Moore, he talked about how when he went to the Riverdale school, a school that resided in the Bronx, but in a wealthier area. Wes Moore said that the people of Riverdale was not hesitant on reminding non whites that they were in a upscale area of the Bronx in order to keep their property values from decreasing. As well as redlining and blockbusting he went into ghettoization. There were new apartment buildings built for the the middle class, but as blacks began to pour in those buildings took a turn and those apartment buildings became the exclusive spot for the blacks. In the book it is also took a dive into the war on drugs and how it was affecting the different communities. Drugs riveted the streets, making its way to anyone it could reach. Wes Moore’s brother was swallowed by the streets and never made it past the 6th grade and Wes Moore began to sell at the age of 11, even after his mother moved into a working class neighborhood. Throughout the shifts and changes the Wes Moores went through it was hard escape what they knew to become normal, in their world society made drugs and gang violence acceptable, the norm. Navigating around those “social norms” lead them down a steep
In the textbook The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore, the author illustrates about the lives of two young African-American men who share the same name: Wes Moore. They start their similar childhoods in Baltimore Maryland, with poverty, violence, drug game and fatherlessness. The author Wes Moore (Moore )became a Rhodes Scholar and a best-selling author, but the other Wes Moore ( Wes ) was sentenced to life in prison, The author Moore’s purpose in writing the story is to examine how two people with such similar backgrounds can end up with completely different lives. The author illustrates the way in which our destinies can be dictated by our environments. He claims that without the necessary resources, it is often not possible to make good decisions. He argues how people’s lives are influenced by their environment in which they live.
The Other Wes Moore introduces the lives of two boys with similar traits that would one day have different outcomes in life. As one begins to read the novel the clarity of their situation becomes evident, it is to an extent appropriate to conclude that both Moore’s lives were similar during their childhood, but certainly it was their mentors that guided them to different paths. Although growing up near each other and both being residents of the Baltimore county their influences were shaped from early on. The other Wes Moore was subject to failure because he himself was surrounded by bad role models including his mother that despite wanting the best for his son didn’t do enough to alienate his son from the streets. On the other hand,
Wes Moore, the author, was sitting in a chapel listening to Colonel Billy Murphy give a speech about his departure from Valley Forge. During the speech, Colonel Murphy said a phrase that stuck with Wes for the rest of his life. The Colonel stated that a person should live their lives to the fullest and make sure everything they worked towards matter. The quote from the Colonel gave Wes the determination to stay at Valley Forge and attend the junior college. Wes decided that he wanted to lead soldiers in the Army and that was going to be apart of his impact on the
He interviewed the other Wes Moore, his friends, his friends, his family, his family. He eventually concluded that the difference was the people they grew up around, and who influenced their lives in the ways that they did. Wes eventually states in the book the alarming thing he came to realize behind their stories. “The chilling truth is that Wes’s story could have been mine; the tragedy is that my story could have been his.” (pg. 180, epilogue). This goes to show how every decision they made affected their lives in some way. I think the major difference that diverted their lives in opposite directions was the fact that Wes Moore who graduated Harvard, was sent to military school by his mother when he was younger. “Aside from my family and friends, the men I most trusted all had something in common: they all wore the uniform of the United States of America.” (pg.132) The fact that he had people he could lean on, and he wasn’t surrounded by poverty in the suburbs of Maryland for most his life, was the deciding factor that put him of the path to
Spartanburg High School introduced author and Goodreads Choice Awards Best Memoir & Autobiography nominee, Wes Moore. Not only is he an author, he’s also a social entrepreneur, producer, political analyst, and decorated US Army officer. He has appeared on numerous national broadcasts, wether it was from: Oprah, CBS Sunday Morning, The View, Syndicated Solutions, Sirius XM Satellite Radio, Ebony Magazine, USA Today, People, Essence, and many more. He’s not only known from the broadcasts he has been featured on, but from one of his New York Times Bestsellers book, The Other Wes Moore. During his lecture he gives us a brief summary about his childhood. He tells how he saw his father killed in front of him and how he and his sisters grew up in
Wes’s mother sent him off to military school at a very young age, after repeatedly failing in the regular school systems. Military school formed Wes into a citizen leader, made him more self-sufficient, and his personal responsibility intensified. Wes grew more self-sufficient as the years passed and was soon responsible for numerous younger cadets. His citizen leadership expanded and he became the highest-ranking cadet on campus, with over eight hundred cadets under his command. Military school shaped Wes as a man, and prepared him for the hardship of college
They made fun of him and his friend Justin who also goes there and lives in the same neighborhood. Wes didn’t like the fact that they judged him so he didn’t do his schoolwork, he acted out, and got in trouble at home with his mom. What changed his path was when his mother sent him to military school at Valley Forge. From there he became in charge of other charges at the school and graduated with good grades and a good attitude. After Wes graduated he went to John Hopkins University and then was recruited to study aboard in Africa. This Wes Moore didn’t let his surroundings or the people in his neighborhood decide who he was going to be in life. He decided for himself. While the other Wes Moore and his brother Tony decided to rob a bank and then he shot a cop. Wes and his brother let their surroundings and the people in their lives decide who they were going to be. This book is a great tool to teach high school students many different things about life and how to navigate it. Most of all, it allows them to realize that your social status doesn’t determine who or what you’ll be, but the steps you take to get there; furthermore, who you chose to guide you on the right