Wes Moore's The Other Wes Moore

The Other Wes Moore is a novel about two men named Wes Moore, who were both born in Baltimore City, Maryland with similar childhoods. The author, Wes Moore, describes the path the two took in order to determine their fates today. Moore, the author, is a successful scholar, decorated veteran, and a political and business leader, while the other, who will be differentiated as Wes, ended up serving a life sentence for murder. Within both of their life stories, the novel’s sensory, description, and metaphors, can be analyzed into a deeper meaning. Wes had been living his whole life in the streets of Baltimore, grew up fatherless and was left with a brother named Tony who was involved in drugs, crime, and other illegal activity. Starting in the

Wes’s new resident lied in the streets of Dundee Village, where all sorts of people lived with different incomes, races, and ethnicities. Wes was “walking around Dundee Village hoping these bucolically named ‘avenues’ and ‘circles’ would lead him to a better place than the city streets had” (Moore 57) while also in hope of a better future. This quote is particularly significant because of its hidden metaphoric meaning. Bucolic, an adjective defined as of or relating to shepherds; pastoral, Wes was awaiting a new fate that led him, much like a shepherd, to a future exceeding his brother’s. Dundee Village was an escape for the Moore family, but it was also a flight for many other families and independents from the streets of Baltimore. The hopes of Wes, Mary, and many others can be depicted through the sight of their new neighborhood in which “flowerpots were filled with geraniums or black-eyed Susans, and floral wreaths hung from each wooden door” (Moore 56). Not only does this use imagery to describe the beauty of Dundee Village, but the metaphoric aspect contributes to the message that Moore is trying to