Chapter 3
Wes Moore (Author)
Joy made the decision to send her children to private school after seeing how poor the public school system had become. She worked multiple jobs to manage the costs and relied on her parents to watch the children before and after school while at work. Wes became friends with Justin, bonding because they lived close to each other, but also because they were two of the only black kids at their school.
Attending the private school had an impact on Wes’s reputation. In an effort to combine his two worlds, Wes’s uncle suggested he invite friends from school to play baseball with his neighborhood friends. The game ended after only a few innings when arguments between the two groups turned into fist fights.
“I was becoming too ‘rich’ for the kids from the neighborhood and too ‘poor’ for the kids at school. I had forgotten how to act naturally, thinking way too much in each situation and getting tangled in the contradictions between my two worlds” (Moore 53). His grades and confidence began to slip, and his mother began to threaten to send him to military school. Despite having the same circumstances as Wes, Justin was one of the top performing students in their grade, and he warned Wes to get it together because he thought Joy was serious. Wes never believed his mother would send him to military school.
The Other Wes Moore
Mary and Wes were now living in Baltimore County in an attempt to distance themselves from the streets of Baltimore City. Tony was already deep in the drug game with people working for him. He had recently been shot, right around the same time that Wes failed sixth grade and had to repeat it. These events solidified Mary’s decision to move.
While Wes knew what Tony did to earn money was wrong, he was also envious of the nice clothes and things he was able to buy with his money. One day, he saw a kid “wearing a headset right out of the Janet Jackson ‘Control’ video" (Moore 57). When he asked how he could get one of those, the kid explained that all Wes had to do was wear one and speak into it whenever he saw the police come by, and he would get paid for it. Wes knew this part of the drug game Tony warned him to stay away from, but the money sold Wes.
Wes had tried marijuana only once; stealing his mother’s stash on a day he skipped school, and shared it with Woody and some friends. It made Wes feel terrible and all he wanted was for the effects to wear off, but it was not enough to keep Wes out of his job as lookout.
Chapter 4
The Other Wes Moore
Wes had begun selling drugs, which was making him plenty of money. He explained his cash flow and expensive purchases by telling his mother he had become a successful DJ in the neighborhood. Mary was sold on the story while Tony was suspicious and knew something was terribly wrong because Wes’s room was filled with towers of shoe boxes, and with little difficulty he discovered that Wes was in the drug business which Tony desperately warned him about. But after getting in a fight with Wes, he decided to stop trying to persuade him to not get into the drug game. Although, Tony did succeed in getting Mary to investigate further into Wes’s income flow. She ended up looking in boxes she found under the bed which she discovered drugs were hiding in it.
Upon arrival and realizing what his mother had done, Wes became upset, so he left his mother’s house and headed to his older girlfriend’s. “Wes complained to her about his mother’s abuse of his privacy. His girlfriend sympathized. Before she realized what she was doing, she’s agreed to make her home his new place of operations”(Moore 74).
Author Wes Moore
Wes has been struggling in school, and Joy has started to believe his teachers’ suggestions, that Wes must have a learning disability because he is unable to retain information. However, as she listens to Wes rap the lyrics to a song he just heard a few days earlier, she realizes he is just not working hard enough. What Joy didn’t know was that Wes rarely attended class. At the time, Nikki was also struggling with school. She attended three different high schools in four years. Shani was the prodigy of the family, with reading scores higher than her older siblings.
Wes was very protective of his family, particularly of Shani. Once when she was punched in the face, Wes threatened the person who did it as well as her older brother, and Shani was never bothered by them again. Wes’s fierce attitude was just one of the things he learned from his friends on the streets of the Bronx. He learned about hip hop music and the way it reconciled his two worlds, as well as the “facts of life” and the realities of gang violence.
One day, Wes met up with his friend Shea, a drug runner. Shea was working on a corner and Wes sat down to hang out with him. Shea suggested they tag the wall they were sitting by, and Wes agreed, spraying his tag “KK” with a circle around it. Almost immediately, a police car pulls up and catches the boys as they try to run away. They are put in handcuffs and thrown in the back of the police car. Wes is very upset, and realizes this is not the life for him. He does not want to disappoint his mother, and is angry at the defiant way Shea is treating the policemen. Wes, on being arrested: “I became aware of how I had put myself in this situation – this man now had control of my body; even my own hands had become useless to me. More than that, he had control of my destiny. And I couldn’t deny that it was my own stupid fault. I didn’t have the energy for romantic rebellion – the possibility of losing all control of my life was like a depthless black chasm that had suddenly opened up in front of me” (Moore 83). When the policemen decide to let them go, Wes is thankful and sears to himself that he will never be in a situation like that again. However, just a week later, Wes is tagging again.
Wes Moore (Author)
Joy made the decision to send her children to private school after seeing how poor the public school system had become. She worked multiple jobs to manage the costs and relied on her parents to watch the children before and after school while at work. Wes became friends with Justin, bonding because they lived close to each other, but also because they were two of the only black kids at their school.
Attending the private school had an impact on Wes’s reputation. In an effort to combine his two worlds, Wes’s uncle suggested he invite friends from school to play baseball with his neighborhood friends. The game ended after only a few innings when arguments between the two groups turned into fist fights.
“I was becoming too ‘rich’ for the kids from the neighborhood and too ‘poor’ for the kids at school. I had forgotten how to act naturally, thinking way too much in each situation and getting tangled in the contradictions between my two worlds” (Moore 53). His grades and confidence began to slip, and his mother began to threaten to send him to military school. Despite having the same circumstances as Wes, Justin was one of the top performing students in their grade, and he warned Wes to get it together because he thought Joy was serious. Wes never believed his mother would send him to military school.
The Other Wes Moore
Mary and Wes were now living in Baltimore County in an attempt to distance themselves from the streets of Baltimore City. Tony was already deep in the drug game with people working for him. He had recently been shot, right around the same time that Wes failed sixth grade and had to repeat it. These events solidified Mary’s decision to move.
While Wes knew what Tony did to earn money was wrong, he was also envious of the nice clothes and things he was able to buy with his money. One day, he saw a kid “wearing a headset right out of the Janet Jackson ‘Control’ video" (Moore 57). When he asked how he could get one of those, the kid explained that all Wes had to do was wear one and speak into it whenever he saw the police come by, and he would get paid for it. Wes knew this part of the drug game Tony warned him to stay away from, but the money sold Wes.
Wes had tried marijuana only once; stealing his mother’s stash on a day he skipped school, and shared it with Woody and some friends. It made Wes feel terrible and all he wanted was for the effects to wear off, but it was not enough to keep Wes out of his job as lookout.
Chapter 4
The Other Wes Moore
Wes had begun selling drugs, which was making him plenty of money. He explained his cash flow and expensive purchases by telling his mother he had become a successful DJ in the neighborhood. Mary was sold on the story while Tony was suspicious and knew something was terribly wrong because Wes’s room was filled with towers of shoe boxes, and with little difficulty he discovered that Wes was in the drug business which Tony desperately warned him about. But after getting in a fight with Wes, he decided to stop trying to persuade him to not get into the drug game. Although, Tony did succeed in getting Mary to investigate further into Wes’s income flow. She ended up looking in boxes she found under the bed which she discovered drugs were hiding in it.
Upon arrival and realizing what his mother had done, Wes became upset, so he left his mother’s house and headed to his older girlfriend’s. “Wes complained to her about his mother’s abuse of his privacy. His girlfriend sympathized. Before she realized what she was doing, she’s agreed to make her home his new place of operations”(Moore 74).
Author Wes Moore
Wes has been struggling in school, and Joy has started to believe his teachers’ suggestions, that Wes must have a learning disability because he is unable to retain information. However, as she listens to Wes rap the lyrics to a song he just heard a few days earlier, she realizes he is just not working hard enough. What Joy didn’t know was that Wes rarely attended class. At the time, Nikki was also struggling with school. She attended three different high schools in four years. Shani was the prodigy of the family, with reading scores higher than her older siblings.
Wes was very protective of his family, particularly of Shani. Once when she was punched in the face, Wes threatened the person who did it as well as her older brother, and Shani was never bothered by them again. Wes’s fierce attitude was just one of the things he learned from his friends on the streets of the Bronx. He learned about hip hop music and the way it reconciled his two worlds, as well as the “facts of life” and the realities of gang violence.
One day, Wes met up with his friend Shea, a drug runner. Shea was working on a corner and Wes sat down to hang out with him. Shea suggested they tag the wall they were sitting by, and Wes agreed, spraying his tag “KK” with a circle around it. Almost immediately, a police car pulls up and catches the boys as they try to run away. They are put in handcuffs and thrown in the back of the police car. Wes is very upset, and realizes this is not the life for him. He does not want to disappoint his mother, and is angry at the defiant way Shea is treating the policemen. Wes, on being arrested: “I became aware of how I had put myself in this situation – this man now had control of my body; even my own hands had become useless to me. More than that, he had control of my destiny. And I couldn’t deny that it was my own stupid fault. I didn’t have the energy for romantic rebellion – the possibility of losing all control of my life was like a depthless black chasm that had suddenly opened up in front of me” (Moore 83). When the policemen decide to let them go, Wes is thankful and sears to himself that he will never be in a situation like that again. However, just a week later, Wes is tagging again.
- Written by Vaidesh Raman