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Shah 1 Hemil Mehul Shah Professor Sabrina Madison English 101 - 12880 21 April 2019 One Name, Two Fates The book "The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates", is about two people who had the same name – Wes. However, both their lives turned out to be drastically different from each other. We see similarities and differences between both Wes's. Both Wes’s had lost their fathers at a very young age, which may have had an impact on their life affecting the way they grew up. From the name of the book, it is quite safe to say that the ending for both the characters might be drastically in the opposite direction, with one falling deeper into the chasm of drugs, and the other recovering from it and making an honest living. At the start of the book, we see that both, author Wes and the other Wes live in neighborhoods that were influenced by drugs and other problems. When author Wes’s father, Westly dies, Joy decides to move with her parents in the Bronx, author Wes’s grandparents, which was also a neighborhood that had been severely impacted by the crack epidemic and gang violence. Meanwhile, Mary and the other Wes have moved to Northwood. Not wanting to send author Wes to the public school in the Bronx, Joy decides to send him to Riverdale, a private school. Due to him and another friend of his being the only two black kids in the private school, author Wes begins to feel alienated both in his school as well as his neighborhood. Due to this, his grades begin to fall. The other Wes supposedly attends the school nearby, while he rarely goes to class. Despite being intelligent, he seems to have poor academic grades, probably due to his friends.

Shah 2 Author Wes is one of the only black kids in his school, Riverdale, along with his friend Justin, who is also from the Bronx. Due to him and Justin attending a private school, they are too rich for their friends in the Bronx, but too poor for their friends at school. This leads to them taking actions such as tagging walls with author Wes’s friend Shea to feel accepted in the Bronx. Author Wes used the tag ‘Kid Kupid’ to tag his walls. HE and Shea were once almost arrested for tagging walls by the cops. The cops decided to let the kids off the hook and, “a week later, Kid Kupid was on the loose again, adding my [author Wes’s] tag to another graffiti-filled Bronx wall.” (65). On the other hand, the other Wes is friends with Woody, who tries to stop him from stabbing another kid while playing football. After feeling jealous about Tony’s expensive wardrobe, he stumbles upon some kids wearing headsets and is told that those kids are paid to wear them, leading to his entry into the drug business. While author Wes and other Wes may have had slightly different upbringings, they were strikingly like each other. The characters mother’s Mary and Joy had different personalities and approaches towards their children. Mary knew about Tony being involved in drugs and yet did nothing to stop Wes from being attracted to Tony’s lifestyle. On the other hand, Joy threatened author Wes by telling him that he would be sent to military school if he continued to perform badly in school. So, despite having similar upbringings with some differences, the fates of both Wes’s might turn out to be on totally opposite tracks from each other, with one rising above and the other falling deeper into the chasm of drugs.

Shah 3 Works Cited Moore, Wes. The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates. Spiegel & Grau, 2010....