In the book The Other Wes Moore the author, who is an accomplished writer, U.S. Marine, fine athlete, graduate of Johns Hopkins University and Oxford University, a one time White House Fellow, Rhode Scholar, a happily married man who traveled the world, is looking back into his troubled childhood trying to figure out what made him the man he’s become and prevented him from going down the path that so many young men with the same background, have taken. The question of what made the difference in the author’s life was provoked by the small article Wes Moore read in the local Baltimore newspaper. The article described the events of the robbery that left a security guard dead. By coincidence, one of the criminal’s name was Wes Moore, the same name the author has. “…I was struck by the superficial similarities between us, of course: we’d grown up at the same time, on the same streets, with the same name…”(xii). The convicted Wes was analyzing both of the life stories as well. He said: “…From everything you told me, both of us did some pretty wrong stuff when we were younger. And both of us had second chances. But if the situation or the context where you make the decisions don’t change, then second chances don’t mean too much…”(66). To that Wes the writer answered: “…I guess it’s hard sometimes to distinguish between second chances and last chances…”.
In my essay I will refer to the writer as “Fortunate Wes” and refer to the convicted criminal as “Unfortunate Wes”.
It is nearly impossible to describe the evident similarities the two boys had without mentioning the differences, small and big, that eventually led two boys along two completely different paths.

Both boys were born in Baltimore. At that time it was a troubled city. The school drop out rates, teen pregnancy rates, single parent households and drug use were very high. As the boys were growing up, the city was getting worse and worse. The Bronx, where Fortunate Wes moved to, was very much similar to Baltimore. “…I heard my grandparents talk about how drugs and violence had slowly crept in. Fear and apathy had become the new norm…”(40).
Both boys were growing up without a father, like many other kids in their neighborhood. But the reasons their fathers were missing were different. The Fortunate Wes’s father died of a medical illness. He was a journalist and caring father and husband. Unfortunate Wes’s father, Bernard, never had a “…steady job. He spent most of his time searching for himself at the bottoms of liquor bottles…” (23). As Unfortunate Wes put it: “ …Your father wasn’t there because he couldn’t be, my father wasn’t there because he chose not to be. We are going to mourn their absence in different ways…” (3).
The other family members besides parents played a significant role in both boys’ lives. For Unfortunate Wes it was his older brother, Tony, who was trying, at least in the beginning, to steer his younger brother away from the drug business. But Tony was in the drug selling business himself and his hypocritical advise “do as I say, not as I do” did not work. For Fortunate Wes, it was his grandparents and aunts and uncles who were on the same page with Wes’s mother, Joy. Not only did they support Joy’s decision to send Wes to military school, but they also helped her to pay for it. “…My grandparents knew that I was at a crucial juncture in my life… My grandparents took the money they had in the home in the Bronx, decades of savings and mortgage payments, and gave it to my mother so that she could pay for my first year of military school…”(95). Both boys had similar attitudes toward school. Fortunate Wes “…let (his) grades slip. (He) allowed (his) standards at school to become pathetic…” (54). Unfortunate Wes’s “…performance in school declined. His test scores were high enough to make it to the next grade, but not high enough to make a legitimate argument that he’d learned anything. He was skating by…”(29). Both boys’ mothers tried to remove their kids from the unfavorable neighborhoods. Unfortunate Wes’s mom was moving from one area of Baltimore to another, but geographic difference did not save Wes. Fortunate Wes’s mom took a different approach. She moved Wes to better schools. (I don’t think Joy’s move from Baltimore to the Bronx was made in an attempt to escape. She simply needed her parents close by for help and support). Initially, Joy put Fortunate Wes in a private school. “…She wasn’t a snob, she was scared. She knew the public schools in the area…Things were falling apart, and the halls of school were no exception or refuge from the chaos outside…”(47). Most importantly, when Fortunate Wes’s mom saw that even being in a private school was not making a difference, she undertook a very bold measure and sent Wes to military school. “…I knew mother was considering sending me away but I never thought she’d actually do it…” (87). Joy was able to remove her son from the drug-selling environment just on time. I personally think if she hesitated a little longer, it would have been too late.
Unfortunate Wes’s mom tried to save her son also, but when she decided to do so it was too late: Wes had already tasted the goodness of easy money made by selling drugs. The methods Mary was using were not effective. For example, she flushed her son’s drug supplies down the toilet bowl. It had an opposite effect: Wes had an urge to sell more to bring back the lost money. What Mary did not realize, is that her own drug addiction strengthened Wes’s decision to sell drugs after he tried his mom’s drugs himself: “…Wes now knew for sure how powerful drugs could be…And he understood…how addictive that feeling could be, and how easy it would be to make some money off selling that feeling to people who needed it…”(62). “…(Mary) closed her eyes; her mind raced: Who is to blame for this? Tony, the neighborhood, the school system, Wes’s friends? She put them all on trial in her mind….”(74).

I agree with the author, who, after analyzing his own and Unfortunate Wes’s lives, tried to conclude: “ ‘What made the difference?’ And the truth is that I don’t know. …People are so widely different, and it’s hard to know when genetics or environment or just bad luck is decisive… I’ve become convinced that there are some clear and powerful measures that can be taken during this crucial time in a young person’s life…There is no one thing that leads people to move in one direction or another….The most important thing that happened to me was not being physically transported-the moves from Baltimore to the Bronx to Valley Forge didn’t change my way of thinking. What changed was that I found myself surrounded by people-starting with my mom, grandparents, uncles, and aunts…and a string of wonderful mentors-who kept pushing me to see more than what was directly in front of me”(179). In my opinion, it’s Joy’s refusal to accept that her son might follow the unfortunate path of the majority of kids from their neighborhood: “…She’d been stuck in depression for a long time and hadn’t quite made it to acceptance, no matter how much I’d hoped she’d get there…It seemed like…she was reverting to anger…”(76). “… But no matter how much the world around us seemed ready to crumble, my mother was determined to see us through it…”(47).

If I had to choose one crucial event that directed their fates, I would of course pick the move of Fortunate Wes to Valley Forge. Not only the physical removal from the troubled surroundings and moving to the place that was known for shaping kids up, but the timeliness of that move made a difference. Who knows? If Fortunate Wes stayed, his first encounter with the police could’ve been his next to last chance?
As for Unfortunate Wes, I think his mom’s closing her eyes too an obvious problem and his brother’s hypocritical guidance, set up Wes to end up the way he did. If I had to choose one event that was determining, once again I would refer to Wes’s trying his mom’s drugs for the first time: “…Wes now knew for sure how powerful drugs could be…And he understood…how addictive that feeling could be, and how easy it would be to make some money off selling that feeling to people who needed it…”(62). In conclusion, I would like to cite the author who said: “…The chilling truth is that his story could have been mine. The tragedy is that my story could have been his…”(180). There are many plausible explanations as to why these two boys’ lives went in such opposite directions. What we should learn and use as guidance for ourselves is that “…no accident of birth-not being black or relatively poor, being from Baltimore or the Bronx or fatherless-would ever define or limit me…”(179).