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The Other Wes Moore: Character Analysis

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An education can lead to a valuable set of skills. It did for Wes Moore, the author of The Other Wes Moore, Wes found another person with the exact same name as he and they both had different turning points in their life’s which resulted in one being in prison and the other writing a book about the whole thing. The author was motivated to do better even with his environment trying to tear him down. I can personally relate to this because I have begun to do the same with this semester of school. Wes and I have some things in common, he strived to make a better life for himself and he pretty much saw his father die in front of him and to some extent I saw my mom die in front of me or at least start to. Education is part of our survival because …show more content…

She moved him out of their previous home to a different neighbored but Wes started getting into fights there as well. She tried to teach him a lesson by flushing the drugs she found but that didn’t work either. Wes continued to go into a downward spiral and when Wes was taken into custody and his brother showed up his mother said, “It’s too late… Wes is already gone” (Moore 107). Even though those words were not heard they were felt. You could feel Wes’ mother’s heart breaking after she tried so hard to raise a good son she ended up still having to see her son taken by a police car. The other Wes Moore felt that he had to “Send a message” and one up whoever does him wrong ( Moore 34). This can very much relate to the motivation that Daniel Pink, the author of a book called Drive, found. Drive discuss the different types of motivation, motivation 1.0 is the motivation that we use in order to survive, motivation 2.0 is in regard to rewards and punishments and motivation 3.0 has to do with purpose, mastery and autonomy. Pink states that, “Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement.” (Pink 108). Wes Moore had to deal with both when he got sent to military school. When he first got there he hated it but eventually started to love it and became engaged and out of his own free with he became an author. The other Wes did what he needed to do or what he felt he needed to do to send a message so people wouldn’t mess with

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One quote Wes Moore uses to portray this about Wes is that “It was years before Wes’s mom found out her son had been arrested that day. By the time

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Where we’re from, who we know, and how our mental makeup is, is very important in our lives. It can be the deciding factor between life in prison and a life dedicated to giving back to others. In The Other Wes Moore, The lives of two young men are examined through three distinct lenses, how the role our environment, social capital (How we get ahead by helping each other) and how our mindset can dictate who we become later on in life. Both of these young men grew up in roughly the same environment, the ghettos of Baltimore, Maryland and the Bronx, New York, respectively.

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Even though his brother was too deep into drug and gang culture to escape, “[he] wanted Wes to be nothing like him” (72). Yet, Wes was consumed by the, “… same game that had consumed [his brother] and put a bullet or two in him,” and had never known anything in his family outside of drugs and gang violence, so drugs and gangs were the only expectation Wes had, the only place he saw himself fitting into (58). Ultimately, the expectations of those

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Education is the core of life. Ever since the establishment of public schoolings it became the social norm for children and older to seek education. The reason varies. Although, an education means to gain insightful experiences or to either gain or take guidance, there are more than just two meanings. From the essays examined: “Frank Carothers and Ted Erlandson, Loyola University”, “Suddenly I Felt Really Strange” both by Mike Rose, and “Five Ways to Wisdom” by Otto Friedrich, which shares different perspective of education and the means to be an educated person.

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