The Other Wes Moore Critical Analysis

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The memoir The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore is about two boys with similar backgrounds living different fates. Foreshadowing, a literary device in which the author gives clues about events that will happen later in the story, help readers to determine and understand what caused the lives of the two boys to end up differently. Although, the two boys had the decision to make the right choices on their own, Wes Moore wrote the memoir to show that if children do not have strong parental figures they will not succeed in life which leads to their mothers. In several situations, Mary, Wes’s mother, did not provide the proper guidance that her son needed. After skipping school and partying with his friends, Wes came back home intoxicated. Because …show more content…

Wes had started to make large amounts of money. After Tony, Wes’s brother, points out the manifest, Mary was unable to accept the truth that Wes was a drug dealer. “She knew what her older son was into but didn’t think that there was anything she could do for him now. She hoped that Wes would be different,” (Moore 71). Since Mary had no idea how to make Wes different, Mary continued to stay silent. Because of her silence, Wes could not help but to continue selling drugs. Like any parent would have done, Mary could have at least tried to solve this problem by talking with Wes and finding out the truth about the job. If they had an honest discussion, Mary could have gotten to the origin of Wes’ reasons for wanting the job, and come up with other possibilities. Instead, she waits until she is unable to make a difference in her son’s life. If Mary chose to take a disparate, more vital role in Wes’s life, his fate would have turned out differently. As a result of intervention at any one of those crucial events in Wes’s childhood, Mary could have made an impact in Wes’s future decision-making and led him into a different route. Instead, Wes had to be a parent to his children from behind bars. With any luck, he will be able to have more of an impact on their lives compared with Mary on

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