One Name Two Fates Growing up in the same place with the same name, the author Wes Moore and the other Wes Moore now have very different lives. The author’s father died when he was young. His mother raised him and his sisters with discipline and sent him to the prestigious high school, Riverdale. There he would get into trouble, and after one too many incidents, his mother sent him to military school. Here he learns true discipline and how to be a leader. This shaped him for his now successful career as a politician and book writer. The other of Wes Moore’s fathers left him when he was young. He had an older brother named Tony, who sold drugs and was a bad influence. His mother wasn’t as strict, and he dropped out of school. He then gets into the business of selling drugs and eventually ends up in prison for life. …show more content…
Role models were a big factor in why these two people ended up having very different lives. The other Wes Moore looked up to Tony because he was the only man in his life. Tony instilled a revenge mindset in Wes when he was little: “Rule number 1: If someone disrespects you, send a message so fierce they won’t have the chance to do it again” (Moore 73). This mindset later gets him in trouble for shooting Ray. He also saw him make money from drugs and influenced him in that direction. The author had a disciplined mother and grandparents to look up to. His grandpa was, in fact, a minister, and both of his grandparents sacrificed so that he could attend military school. Expectations play a factor in the outcome of their lives. The author had high expectations. His mother sent him to prestigious schools and disciplined him. His grandparents sacrificed for him to go to military school because they believed he would be great. The other, Wes Moore, did not have these expectations. He dropped out of school, and his mom didn’t do much about it. His mother did not discipline
Why have the two boys, with the same name and grew up fatherless in the similar poverty-stricken neighborhoods, developed into two dramatically different individuals: a Rhodes Scholar and a convicted inmate? While the book The Other Wes Moore goes to great length to answer the question profoundly, I also mull over just how and why the two Wes Moores have chosen their own paths to the opposed destines. According to the book, environment, family, education, others’ expectation, and opportunities are the primary factors contributing to the two Wes Moores’ failure and success. On the top of those factors, I find that the role models, the supports of their mothers, and the choices they made are surely worth
Moore, Wes. The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2010. Print.
“One name, two fates.” The characters of the two Wes Moores are a reflection of our society in which people with similar background can choose different paths in the metaphorical fork in the road, purely because of how the people in their surrounding environment shaped them. Joy, Mary, Captain Ty Hill, Tony, Justin, Alicia and Cheryl, also many other chracter I didn’t mention about, those people are all significant factors in shaping the two Wes Moores’ life.
By the other Wes not going to school and getting into the drug game accounted to his fate and by Wes going to military school helped him on the right path. Another difference in the men’s lives that changed their fate was their families. The other Wes did not have good role models when he was growing up. His brother Tony was big into the drug industry and most of his friends were into the drug game. Even though Tony didn’t want Wes in the drug game, “Tony had now spent over a decade dealing drugs and knew how much money could be made in the game”(Moore 70). As a young child it is hard to not follow in your family's footsteps when that's all you know to be true. When the other Wes was making decisions about his life he didn’t have good role models to show him what is right and wrong. On the other hand Wes had very good role models in his life. His mother did everything she could for Wes, like sending him to a private school, moving in with their grandparents and sending him to military. His mom and grandparents sacrificed a lot for him to have a good future. Also, they were good role models, hard-working and
People in their lives may confront different challenges, difficulties, and opportunities; their choices and decisions significantly influence their paths in life. Their abilities to making right choices are determined by many factors, including family, neighborhood, education, personal responsibility, age, environment, religion, media, others’ expectations, etc. Even two people, who have identical names, live similar circumstances, they have two different fates. Wes Moore (2011), in his book “The Other Wes Moore,” tells a story of how and why the other Wes Moore and himself had different lives. Even though the author Wes and the other Wes both grew up in Baltimore, their different choices, which were influenced by their families, friendship,
The role of mothers played a role in the development of the both characters, and this is shown plenty of times throughout the story. Both Wes Moores didn't really have a father. The authors father ended up dying when the author was at a young age, and the other Wes moore's father left him. That just leaves the mom for raising both Wes Moores which played a major role in development. "My mother decided soon after our move to the Bronx that I was not going to public school." This quote is proof of how the author had more chances because of his mother which was a role in development in both Wes Moores. The other Wes had more freedom since his mom worked a lot but was still poor so this inspired him to join the drug game. The author's mom decided
In the book The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates, Author Wes Moore, explains the story of two men named Wes Moore, born blocks apart in the same city of Baltimore. Meanwhile, one serving was a life sentence for an armed jewellery store robbery in which an off-duty officer was killed and the other was a Rhodes Scholar. The Author Wes Moore had read the story of Wes imprisonment in the same newspaper which highlighted the success of the author. The lead to the Author Wes Moore becoming with fixated on the story of Wes, a person he had never met, so much that he decided to write him a letter, asking the questions, Who are you? Where did it go wrong for you? How did this happen? Wes wrote back, and so began a correspondence which deepened their relationship. The author Wes Moore discovered, during his communication with Wes that “generation of young men, boys who came of age during a historically chaotic and violent time and emerged to succeed and fail in unprecedented ways.” Here is how my mother influenced me to become a determined lady.
Bad choices… Prison… Good choices… Success. These are two completely different ends of life and they can both be talked about by Wes Moore, and the other Wes Moore. Both of these people grew up in West Baltimore a few blocks from each other not even knowing it. Both have siblings and had a rough start in their educations. Wes Moore ends up going to Military school, making good choices and works in the White House, while the other Wes Moore did not make the Best choices and ended up with life in prison due to the murder of a police officer. In The Other Wes Moore, both Wes Moores have a troubling education in the beginning and turn out completely different as well as siblings that acted the same and turned out different.
In contrast, the Other Wes had Moore of a fixed mindset. Fixed mindset, as defined by Dweck in her article Bornology means that an individual believes that their talent is fixed. For instance, if we give a quiz of 5rd grade to 4th grade students, the Fixed mindset student will think that they are not enough smart for this quiz and will not try their best to solve the questions, while the growth mindset students will try to solve the questions. Indeed, Fixed mindset individuals thinks that their intelligence can’t improve and they don’t even want to try to learn new things. Similarly, in the book “The Other Wes Moore” by Wes Moore, the other Wes Moore dreamed of becoming a professional football player or becoming a rapper. The other Moore’s
Eighth grade was one of the greatest school years of my life. This year was full of new experiences, and I have learned so much from them. In English class, we’ve learned a bunch of skills and did numerous activities. We learned about Anne Frank and the Holocaust. We had the opportunity to read many great books, all having a special and unique meaning to them. Our class also learned a variety of skills and strategies ranging from reading comprehension tips to learning how to use the comma. ELA this year was extremely informative and helpful but amusing at the same time.
The first Wes Moore is introduced through a story of him playing a game with his sister. The game ends with him punching his sister, which his mother witnesses. She becomes enraged and makes sure Wes realizes the wrong of his actions. Meanwhile we learn a little more about his mother, Joy. Such as she is from Jamaica and she was beat by her past husband. Then Wes’s father becomes sick and is told to just rest by doctors, but he ends up falling down the stairs unable to breath very soon after. He dies on the ride to the hospital in the ambulance. Then the first Wes’s mother starts to sleep on the couch as a guard against their increasingly dangerous neighborhood. She is deeply troubled by the death of her husband and asks to move back in with
One part of his story stood out the most to me. When he went to his grandma’s house with Tony and he saw his father lying on the couch. He ran up and approached him to only have his father not even recognize him and question “Who are you?”. Having your own father not even recognize him had to be traumatic and made him feel even more alone then ever. At such a young age, young Wes is not even sure who he is and it is a father’s job to teach his young son how to be a good man. Baltimore Wes Moore (the criminal) was only a product of his environment and it was inevitable that he lived the life he did and will sit in jail for the rest of his life. He could only react to what he was brought up in. Environment plays an important role in everyone’s life. I am not a strong believer in luck, I believe that you can make your own luck, and the harder you work the luckier you will become. Some may think the difference between the two Wes’s is that Brooklyn Wes (the author) was just luckier than Baltimore Wes. I don’t believe this to be the case at all. Brooklyn Wes was taken out of the hostile environment and put into an environment that expected more of him. Baltimore Wes was just left to believe that this is who he was to become. He was never able to see the world of opportunities that were out there and how he could change his life. When he first started taking workshop
In The Other Wes Moore, the author Wes and his family had often been outsiders in school, making participation and learning harder. On page eight, he described how his mother, Joy, moved to the Bronx from Jamaica and how “She studied the other kids at
I learned so much from this book about understanding others and ultimately understanding myself. One takeaway I received from the other Wes Moore that impacted me the most, was understanding that my whole life is not just left up to fate or on the other hand my whole life is not just left up to decisions. Seeing how Wes Moore and the other Wes Moore grew up in the same neighborhood, with the same family structure, income level, and similar qualities, one would believe their outcomes would be similar. Wes Moore explains throughout the book how fate is present here, there were some elements in their life that they could not control. Yet he goes on to argue that there were key moments in both of their lives that allowed them to make a decision, and that one decision impacted their entire life. This allows me to understand that there is a balance in my life, so I should put a reasonable amount of pressure on the decisions I make, but I should understand that some things I cannot control and those things will also impact my
My revision paper is on alan moore, Alan Moore is a famous graphic novel writer who has worked on many comic books and graphic novels, these novels are known as Watchmen, The ballad of halo jones, V for Vendetta and From hell. Alan Moore was born on November, 18, 1953, in the United Kingdom, Alan Moore also had several different Occupations other than Being a writer, these other occupations are musician, magician and occultist. Alan moore is also an Anarchist which means he believes in stateless societies. Moore’s upbringing would considered ironic seeing how the area he lived in within the UK was seen as housing illiterate people, but Moore still very much loved his home town with a great a passion, His Home is called Northampton or known as “The Boroughs”.