Research Paper On The Other Wes Moore

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Final Paper In “The Other Wes Moore”, by Wes Moore, the author takes the readers through his life growing up as well as the life of someone who was a stranger to him during his childhood but turned out to be a huge part of his life later on. His name was also Wes Moore and both he and the author grew up in poverty and did not have the best childhood. Although they grew up similarly, their adulthoods were the polar opposite. The author Wes Moore became the top in his class, a Rhodes scholar, and studied at Oxford University to later become very successful. On the other hand, the other Wes Moore is in prison for the rest of his life for a robbery and murder. How did these two grow up so similarly, yet had completely different adulthoods? …show more content…

The example was when Wes’s mom found out that Wes’s girlfriend was pregnant, and her reaction was simply looking up and the two of them, and then resuming to cutting the cake she was cutting. “Mary closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She put down the cake knife and locked her fingers behind her head…After a moment, she brought her arms back to her sides, exhaled, and looked around the table. “So who wants cake?”” (Moore 100). If that was the reaction that every parent had towards pregnancy, we would have a tremendous amount of teens becoming pregnant all of the time with no control. The fact that this was her reaction to something so major just shows how Wes’s drug dealing was upsetting to her yet she would probably just take a deep breath and resume what she was doing. Statistics prove that once someone has been to jail, that they can never mentally be the same again (Lindquist). This could also be a major cause as to why Wes became so defiant and did not listen to his mother or …show more content…

A child will not change their behavior if their parent does not show disapproval and does something about their behavior we they act out. With both of these combine, it made Wes’s opportunities starting from a young age, very slim of being successful. Growing up, Wes Moore had his mom and family around him to support him and when things got bad, his mom sent him to military school as a disciplinary action. This saved Wes from further becoming a bad kid because there, he learned discipline and respect. On the other hand, the other Wes Moore was off selling drugs and doing other bad things while his only influence was his brother. The other Wes Moore was so involved in his profits from selling drugs that he even sold to a cop even though he knew that he was undercover (Moore 112). Wes took this chance because he was so desperate for the twenty dollars he was going to receive, he didn 't care what the consequences were. I believe that if the author Wes Moore never went to military school, that he would have turned out just like the other Wes Moore. Weich from Lincoln County Jail stated that when investigating the jail, inmate were forced to garden as their “hardwork” this was supposed to change them. The inmates just had to be on good behavior and they were then able to garden while in jail (Weich). The point of going to jail is to be disciplined and learn and grow as a

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