Examples Of Poverty In The Other Wes Moore

The Cycle of Poverty

The concept of living paycheck to paycheck is easy to grasp, seeming to have infinite solutions; however, all the while, 60% of United States adults cannot solve this “easy” problem (“Today’s Paycheck”). The solution to this extremely common economic problem doesn’t take into account people’s real lives; it doesn’t take into account the type of environment someone grew up in or even take into account emergencies that families frequently face. The cycle of poverty revolves around the economic setting in which someone grew up or if they had a lack of education. In the novel, The Other Wes Moore, the author Wes Moore goes into details about both his life in addition to the other Wes’s life, including how poverty controlled

The factors that led to the other Wes Moore becoming so different from the author are shown throughout the story, such as him dropping out of high school due to the lucrative drug game or having to return to the said game after trying to get a job which couldn't support his family. The cycle of poverty represented in the novel is almost completely unavoidable, but one of the few exceptions is the author, who had to fight tooth and nail to get out of the cycle.

In the novel, the importance of education is repeatedly expressed throughout the novel, whether it was the lack of education the other Wes received or the military education that the author Wes got. The author manages to break the cycle of poverty, while the other Wes is a demonstration of the vast majority of people who fall victim to it. The other Wes was unmotivated in school, seeing no point in going due to how much money he was gaining from the drug game, and dropped out. While this action can be looked upon as illogical from a privileged standpoint, it was considered ordinary “in Baltimore City, where Northern High School was located it was a dismal 38 percent” (Moore 108). The percentage refers to the graduation

A lack of quality education is common in impoverished areas such as Baltimore, but with more funding, it is possible to provide a safe learning environment for a child. Education is a key factor in a child’s life; with more education, “the more their lives are going to be improved” (“Education Breaks Cycle”). While there is a general idea that education can only influence one thing—the knowledge a child has—it can also aid in supporting a child emotionally. One way that a child’s life can be improved by education is through support: “Schools also offer children support in the form of teachers and staff who have mandatory reporting requirements that can help alert officials to cases of abuse and neglect” (“Education Breaks Cycle"). Allowing children to seek out a figure to help them out opens a pathway to breaking the cycle by gaining better role models and allowing children to have the support they need while growing up. Education provides children with the opportunity to break the cycle of poverty that they would not have