Adversity In The Other Wes Moore

When faced with adversity, some people prevail while others fold. This is evident in the novel The Other Wes Moore with the contrast of the two Wes’s. The author Wes deals with adversity far better than the other Wes. Factors like the people around the person and a person’s support system can be the largest factor of how a person deals with adversity. The author Wes Moore clearly has far more success dealing with the adversity of growing up in the inner city than the other Wes Moore. This is largely due to the impact that his mother has on his life. From a young age his mother disciplines him when he hits his sister and makes sure he knows never to his a woman. “Get to your damn room” (Moore, 5) his mother told him when he playfully punched
Like the author, the other Wes grew up without a father, but not only did the other Wes’s mother play both roles poorly but he had a father figure in his drug dealer brother. He follows in his brother’s footsteps as most people would do who look up to an older sibling and rather than intervening, his mother pretty much denies the fact that she has not one but two sons who are large figures in the drug game in their city. When she does eventually find his stash “She took the box...emptied the contents into the toilet.” (Moore, 73) The closest thing to punishment that Wes got was losing his drugs. Most mothers would flip outif they were to find out their son was going to be a father at the age of 16. When Wes’s mother heard the news that she would become a grandmother her only reactions was, “who wants cake?” (Moore, 101) The other Wes’s mother blew off the problems her son was having rather than help him out with them or punish him. Role models and stable family situations are crucial when it comes to the success of a teen growing up in the inner city. In the case of the two Wes Moores, their home life is easy to point the finger at when it comes the difference of one Rhodes Scholar and another convicted felon coming from the same