The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates

The author struggles to answer why he and Wes led such different lives. However, he does believe that if there is one thing that sets them apart, it was the people in their lives. Moore credits his community—his mother, his grandmother, his peers and chain of command at Valley Forge, and so on—with providing the support, structure, and encouragement that enabled him to make better choices, hold himself accountable for those choices, and discover new opportunities. He argues that these mentors, “who kept pushing [him] to see more than what was directly in front of [him]” (179), made all the difference in his life. Even the decisions he initially resented, like the forced relocation to military school, were made because of his family’s belief in a successful future for him.

The other Wes Moore was decidedly less fortunate in this arena. His primary mentor figure was his older brother Tony. Although Tony was older, he grew up in the same circumstances as Wes. He also lacked a strong mentor figure, and he too fell into the cycle of drugs and violence; he could not exemplify a mature life built upon responsibility and integrity because no one had ever taught those things to him. Instead, Tony passed down the hard-earned lessons he learned on the street. Wes had no positive role models to demonstrate accountability or morality; he had no one to guide him to make better choices. It’s implied that when he did find resources through the Job Corps, it was too little too late—he was already stuck in a certain way of thinking.

The author juxtaposes his youth with Wes’s to argue that “young boys are more likely to believe in themselves if they know that there’s someone, somewhere, who shares that belief” (28). This idea drives his charitable work; in the paperback edition of the book he includes pages of different mentorship organizations that could possibly be the one difference in a young person’s life that guides them toward fulfillment rather than disappointment.