In order to make the difference of the same named boys, I will call the author, “Moore,” and the other one, “Wes.” Both of them had a very similar neighborhood: chaos of poverty, drugs and crimes, which means that they both had a close access to those things. Moore’s father has suddenly died due to an illness when Moore was 3 years old. Moore admits that he only has 2 memories of his father: when he died and when he taught Moore one important thing. When Moore was even smaller, he was playing with his older half-sister, Nikki and playfully punched her. His mother, Joy got very angry and yelled at Moore. Joy was very sensitive to violence because her first husband who is the father of Nikki had drug and alcohol addictions and abused her. As a result, she left him for good, met Westley and had Moore. After calming Joy, Westley gently told Moore that he must “defend” women, not hit them. He assured Moore that his mother loved him, and brought him to apologize to Joy and Nikki. Moore looked admiringly at his father, hoping to imitate him in every way.
While Moore’s father had no choice other than leaving his family, Wes’s father chose to left his family behind. After his father, Barnerd got Wes’ mother, Mary pregnant, he disappeared. Due to alcoholism, Bernard never graduated high school and did not have a stable job. During the handful of times Wes met him, Bernard was in an alcohol-induced stupor and did not recognize his son. However, like Westley, Mary was an example of someone whose hard work and dedication was suddenly undermined by a random act of misfortune. She received her associates degree from a community college and was going to Johns Hopkins University while getting Pell Grant. However, her Pell Grant was terminated, and she was forced to drop off from the school. Her experience shows that no matter how responsible a person tries to be, they can never ensure that opportunities remain open to them. The sudden termination of Mary’s Pell Grant also highlights the theme of injustice and inequality. Mary was socially excluded due to her race and class. Her experience also reveals how the broader issues of racism and inequality affect people’s chances in life. Being an African-American simply impacted Mary’s life dramatically.
Moore had responsible mother and father. Wes had responsible mother and irresponsible father. The influence that family relationship could make to children is not so simple. At this point as children, Wes and Moore were both in a good stage of maturing. Moore admired his father and hoped to imitate him in every way. Wes felt protective of Mary because his father was never around to support her. Moore had one older sister, Nikki and one younger sister, Shani. Nikki was seven years older than him and supportive to him. However, Wes’ older half-brother, Tony spent most of his time in the Murphy Homes Projects and has been dealing drugs since before the age of ten. He was also the closest thing Wes had to a father figure. Although Tony tried very hard to convince Wes to pursue a different path; however, eventually he gave up, admitting that there was nothing he could do to stop Wes making the same decisions as he did.
The sense of inclusion and exclusion are the factors which both of Wes Moores share in their life and which affected to lead them to different paths. Both of them have experienced very strong moments of inclusion and exclusion. Those experiences influenced their way of making choices. They both had inclusion, first of all, because they had strong connection with their grandparents and other relatives. Both of them also experienced a sense of community as they participated in sports. Moore was led to many new communities: the military school, Johns Hopkins University, and as a Rhodes Scholar. While each of which supported him and pushed Moore to become even more successful, Wes did not have positive communities he fit into. Unlike Moore, Wes did not stay in sporting and academic communities, and he did not realize the importance of these communities until they were gone. For example, at the Jobs Corps campus, Wes was surprised by the chance to live and work on what looks like a college campus.
However, he lost this chance too when he graduated from the Jobs Corps and was forced to return. Meanwhile, even Wes’ experience as a boyfriend and father was destroyed by his adultery to Alicia and Cheryl’s drug addiction. Similarly, his relationship with Mary was affected due to his lying and committing crimes. He felt the sense of inclusion again when he was in prison and switched over to Islam. Even though his religious community supported him while he was serving his time, it could not undo the fact that Wes was forever excluded from the outside world and separated from his family. In many ways, prison was the huge exclusionary factor in the book.
Another big factor that influenced Wes Moores was the inclusion and exclusion due to being African-Americans. Both were excluded and left behind from American society. Wes remained in a majority-black neighborhood, so this big exclusion was less immediately effect to him. On the other hand, Moore was strongly affected by exclusion because of race and class, especially when he attended a university-like private school, Riverdale. He describes his time at the school as follows: “I was becoming too ‘rich’ for the kids from the neighborhood and too ‘poor’ for the kids at school” (in-text citation, P. 53 in CH. 3). He had a similar struggle when he first thought about applying to Johns Hopkins; even though he grew up not so far away from the campus, he did not believe that there are any students like him.
Violence has a very big role in this book. Moore inserts it in many different part of this book, and it comes in many different forms. The most obvious one is the violence of the streets. It affected both Wes Moores: a far bigger influence was on Wes’ life than Moore’s. Both men were born in Baltimore at a time in which drugs and gang violence were taking place in the city. However, as Moore grew up, he had cut off the connections with the violence of the streets by first through moving out of the unsafe neighborhood, then enrolling in Riverdale, finding success as a football player, being placed in military school, and so on. It is not hard to see that Moore’s enrollment at military school was the turning point that made him succeed in life and escape the streets for good. On the other hand, Wes had no way to escape from it. Mary, Tony, and Woody (who was a good influence to Wes when they were young) tried to keep him away from crime and violence. However, even though Wes himself had no desire to engage in violence, and tried multiple times to pursue a different path, it seemed it was unavoidable that he entered the world of crime and violence.
In this book, Moore illustrates that discipline is on the opposite side of the same coin of violence. Moore’s enrollment at military school shows it very well. On the other hand, discipline (especially the criminal justice system) was also shown in the book to be a form of violence. When both Wes Moores were young, they both often had troubles with the police. The police behaved in a way of violent and aggressive even though the boys were only children. Also, Wes’ life imprisonment illustrates the unfairness of the prison system. Moore does not disagree that Wes should have been sent to prison due to the violent crime he involved. It was clear that the discipline of prison had significantly changed Wes, despite of the fact that he could likely emerge a non-threatening and responsible member of society. Unlike Moore, whose experience of a disciplinary institution (military school) ultimately enabled him to succeed, Wes was stuck with discipline for discipline’s sake.
