The Other Wes Moore Analysis

If you could have seen the end from the beginning, would you have chosen a different path? Two young boys virtually living the same early life, yet finding divergent outcomes is the crux of “The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates” authored by Wes Moore. In addressing the circumstances that brought each Wes Moore to their destinies, we find a poignant message, “I guess it’s hard sometimes to distinguish between second chances and last chances” (Moore 67). Wes offers readers a glimpse of how both boys would weave their way through difficult sets of circumstances as one enters military school, attends college and becomes a Rhodes Scholar with a bright future ahead, and the other experiments with drugs, sells drugs, is a teenage father of two, and commits crimes of increasing intensity leading him into life in prison. Significant factors including parental support, influential figures and opportunities with consequences determined the divergent paths each Wes Moore chose to take and sealed their respective fates.
Consequences of being raised by a single mother played a significant role in both of the Wes Moore’s lives but had vastly different results due to parenting style. Wes, the author, had both parents only to the age of three when his father passed from a tragic illness, yet he remained a subtle influence in his life as a role model. Joy, his mother, made many sacrifices to ensure her son and two other children would be raised in a strong home with discipline and a