63 pages • 2 hours read
Wes MooreThe Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
IntroductionChapter Summaries & Analyses
Introduction Summary
While the author Wes Moore was preparing for his graduate studies at Oxford and having his story illuminated in the Baltimore Sun, the other Wes Moore was arrested for robbery alongside his brother and charged with murder; both brothers were likely to receive the death penalty. Because Moore couldn’t shake the story and feeling of connection with the other Wes Moore, he wrote a letter to him. The imprisoned Wes Moore wrote back, and so began their correspondence. While spending time with Wes, the author discovered that “[their] two stories together [helped him] to untangle some of the larger story of [their] generation of young men, boys who came of age during a historically chaotic and violent time and emerged to succeed and fail in unprecedented ways” (xiii). In the author’s own words, “this book is meant to show how, for those of us who live in the most precarious places in this country, our destinies can be determined by a single stumble down the wrong path, or a tentative step down the right one” (xiv).
Introduction Analysis
Rather than immediately launching into the narrative of the two Wes Moores, the author uses the Introduction to explain the purpose of the book: He wants to investigate how two young men who grew up in such similar contexts and circumstances could end up with such totally different lives. His investigation illuminates the “the crucial inflection points in every life, the sudden moments of decision where our paths diverge and our fates first sealed” (xi). With this, Moore sets the stage for the book’s biggest thematic message—that the choices made along any path are what set us on a certain trajectory. Even though he and Wes grew “up at the same time, on the same streets, with the same name” (xii), the author became a Rhodes Scholar and proud soldier, while the other Wes Moore will be incarcerated for the rest of his life. Moore summarizes this main theme with his observation that “life and death, freedom and bondage, hang in the balance of every action we take” (xiv).
