Here is the story of two boys and the journey of a generation. They both were born into the same city in low income families. Both struggle in school initially. Both their fathers were missing from the picture. However, Wes Moore who grows up to be the author was raised by a single mother because his father passes away due to a misdiagnosis.
The tragedy is that my story could have been his.” Through this quote many would believe the story was summarized quite well. Some of the reason is the fact that the two men were raised in similar neighborhoods and crews of friends. They also had similar families, in the way that they both had no father. For the obvious reasons, both men were of African descent, and had the same name. As the story tells the similarities, it also tells the differences between the two men as they grew up.
Having a family is probably one of the most important things to everyone in the world today. Being able to come home and have people there who care about you and wants what’s best for you means a lot too many people, especially children. Having a happy and stable family affects the growth and psychology of younger children. Children who grow up in a healthy environment with a caring family, tend to be happier and more successful as opposed to children who grow up without a family there for them. In the famous novel, Rule of the Bone, Russell Banks shows us the life of a young teenage boy who goes through struggles and conflicts to find the family that he always wanted but never had.
At first, Robert was a wonderful husband and showered his wife with gifts and attention but this eventually faded and the happy couple divorced Ben grew up in inner-city Detroit with his mom and older brother, Curtis, and his family was not the wealthiest either. Sonya Carson raised both of her sons by herself and many times she took on two or three jobs to support her family. Even from his childhood, Ben thought towards a
How was all this possible? He had positive influences around him causing him to be shaped into a smart, successful young man. His family deeply cared about his success and did not want to see failure in his future. In contrast, the other Wes Moore did not have many positive influences in his life. His influence was his brother Tony that was “the closest thing he had to a role model” (page 72) Tony was a troubled child and their mother would depend on him to talk Wes out of drug dealing and fighting when Tony did those activities himself.
THE OTHER WES MOORE Mr. Wes Moore beats odds out of many. He grew up in Baltimore where he made a name for himself. He caused trouble and got kicked out of school. He then moved to Bronx, New York where he proceeded to do the same things. His mother sent him to a camp where he was forced to stay until his behavior improved.
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” This is an excerpt from the poem The Road Less Taken written by Robert Frost. This excerpt explains how Frost made a choice; he made the choice that may have been a hard one. All we really know is that he made the choice that choice that wasn’t the obvious one. In the book The Other Wes Moore, it tells the stories of two very similar men with the same name; one grew up to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated veteran, White House Fellow, and businessman. The other one ended up a drug dealer and is now serving a life sentence for murder.
Ciara Fennelly QU 101 Professor Balkaran 8/19/13 The moving novel, The Other Wes Moore tells the story of two individuals; both named Wes Moore, who both grew up in Baltimore, Maryland. Both boys had parallel circumstances including growing up fatherless, hanging out on the streets and making mistakes that ran them into trouble with the law. One Wes Moore ended up as an extremely respectable man with many accomplishments, including becoming a Rhodes Scholar, an accomplished Veteran, White House Fellow and a businessman. On the contrary, the other Wes Moore was not very fortunate and ended up in prison serving a life sentence. These boys shared the same name but many factors such as learning from disrespect and gaining the respect from their families, peers, neighbors, and community shaped two extremely different lifestyles.
He is very distant even from his family, his grandchildren don't like to visit him and they misbehave during the funeral. Walt also judges them without having into account that they are little kids and teenagers, he dislikes the way they dress and their attitudes. As for Walt's sons, my impression is that he feels like they are trying to send him to the old people's house to get rid of him and take over his belongings, the house and his beautiful car, the Gran Torino. Another issue that Walt has to face after the funeral is that Father Janovich is tries to talk with him in order to get him to confession, because he had promised Walt's wife he would do so after her passing away. This is very difficult to Walt because a younger man is talking him about life, being that he has had strong and near experiences with death, so Walt stereotypes him as a young virgin speaking things learned at school, but that the Father didn't even understand according to him.
“There was a time when I could have lost my friend,” he said, “I kept making excuses about not being able to go out on my bike with him.” Nelson is a kid who has high self-esteem. He had internalized his worry and stress and he would rather solve all the difficulties by himself than ask anyone for help. At first he became a social outcast because of his erratic behavior and he even got angry with his friend for telling the teachers about the things he was going through. Sometimes he even truants from school and fails to finish his homework. But what he didn’t expected was when all his friends knows about his condition, they volunteered their time to help him when he was falling behind the school, and sometimes even help him with his mum’s daily care.