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“This is the story of two boys living in Baltimore with similar histories and an identical name: Wes Moore. One of us is free and has experienced things that he never knew to dream about as a kid. The other will spend every day until his death behind bars for an armed robbery that left a police officer and father of five dead” (Moore xi).

The lives of both Wes Moores narrated in the text originate in the exact same place yet they turn out to be so vastly different. That difference of how something so similar can grow so far apart is exactly what drove Wes Moore to write his novel: The Other Wes Moore. Baltimore Maryland being the link between the two men serves as an inspiration for the novel and further drives in the hard truth that one’s experiences and environments shape the entirety of their life.

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Baltimore Washington Med Center: Hall Kendria C MD, Hospital Drive, Glen Burnie, MD

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After falling ill and going to the hospital, Wes’s dad was treated with utter disrespect that blinded those around and caused him to later die due to selfish negligence of hospital staff. Wes describes the situation from memory saying, "My father had entered the hospital seeking help. But his face was unshaven, his clothes disheveled, his name unfamiliar, his address not in an affluent area. The hospital looked at him askance, insulted him with ridiculous questions, and basically told him to fend for himself. Now, my mother had to plan his funeral” (Moore 14-15). Ideologies such as racism are permanently and undeniably engraved into society and its morals and values. The classism and racism that Wes’s dad faced is just one incident highlighting how unfair and difficult it is for people in Wes’s demographic to succeed in life when all the odds are stacked against them.

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The Bronx of NYC is notoriously known as an extremely violent and dangerous area whose residents attract a certain type of dangerous people that other neighborhoods tend to avoid. This is the neighborhood that Wes would spend the majority of his life in, the neighborhood that would raise him, and the neighborhood that he owes for shaping him into the person he is right now. When moving their family to the Bronx after the tragic loss of her husband, Wes’s Mother Mary maintained a very positive outlook on the neighborhood. An outlook that Wes too later shared expressed as, “The Bronx is an amazing place, home to over a million people. The diversity of the borough is extraordinary…When my mother grew up in the Bronx, despite the rising poverty levels, the sense of family and community were strong” (Moore 38). By finding the positives even in the toughest neighborhoods, Wes was able to make the most out of the environment around him and start his younger years off headed in the right direction.

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Basketball Court, Pitman Avenue, Bronx, NY

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Growing up in a neighborhood consumed by violence and hatred causes Wes and his friends to have to find peace in other places. One of these places was the basketball court that was considered sacred ground by the locals and described by Wes as, We were all enclosed by the same fence, bumping into one another, fighting, celebrating. Showing one another our best and worst, revealing ourselves-even our cruelty and crimes-as if that fence had created a circle of trust. A brotherhood” (Moore 45). The importance of the basketball court is the sense of community and brotherhood that it provides for those enclosed within its fences. That very community gives Wes an essential support system that he is able to fall back in whenever need be. Such a support system that is not accessible to others such as the other Wes Moore.

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The author Wes Moore was majorly shaped and molded into the best version of himself by the influences around him. One of those major influences was his mother who after little consideration decided that Wes would be best suited for future success in a private school, “Riverdale. The pristine campus and well-dressed kids had stunned me on my first visit —the Bronx was not the homogenous ghetto I thought it was. I felt a crazy-making crosscurrent of emotions whenever I stepped onto campus. Every time I looked around at the buildings and the trees and the view of the river, I was reminded of the sacrifices my mother was making to keep me there. And every time I looked at my fellow students, I was reminded of how little I fit in” (Moore 52). Despite the countless sacrifices Wes’s mom made to send him to Riverdale and the positive impact it was supposed to make, Wes didn’t feel as though he fit in. He hated Riverdale and saw it as a pointless waste of his time that only proved to stand in the way of him and his friends from the neighborhood. However, what Wes was unable to see was that by enrolling him in Riverdale, Wes’s mom kept him off of the streets selling drugs in a time where he very well could have been recruited and changed the outcome of his life.

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Before Wes decided to turn his life around, he was engulfed by the same environment that overtook those in the neighborhood around him. The culture of the Bronx promoted drugs, violence, vandalism, and unnecessary acts of defiance from impossibly young ages. These factors of the environment are impossible to avoid which is why Wes and a friend decided to stick to the social norms of the area and tag a building one day. This decision was interrupted by the police who instead of putting the boys in jail, decided to let them go with a warning. “The cops gave us a gift that day, and I swore I would never get caught in a situation like that again. A week later, Kid Kupid was on the loose again, adding my tag to another graffiti-filled Bronx wall” (Moore 84). One would think that such a traumatic experience would cause Wes to stop once and for all and never commit such crimes again. However, it is nearly impossible to do that in Wes’s neighborhood which is why very shortly after, he struck again with no remorse or reconciliation.

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Valley Forge Military Academy and College, Eagle Road, Wayne, PA

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Valley Forge Military Academy and College

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Valley Forge Military Academy and College

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Valley Forge was arguably the best thing that ever happened to Wes throughout his lifetime. At first, Wes absolutely hated the school. He did everything in his power to escape it and thought that military school was pointless. However, Valley Forge gave Wes and his classmates a completely fresh start, “It was a more austere version of Riverdale, a far cry from my Bronx neighborhood…Here our birth names were irrelevant, as were our past acquaintances and past accomplishments and past failures. We were the same now” (Moore 89-90). Here he was able to learn what it means to be disciplined and have control over oneself and how to handle situations where others are not in control of themselves. By attending the school, Wes was set up for success that other kids around him were not privy to which led to him graduating from their high school and college and later going on to gain an associates degree.

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Upon his first trip to the dreaded military school, Wes was offered a way out and he took it leading him to become lost and alone in the middle of the woods with nothing but the unachievable goal of escaping Valley Forge. Years later, Wes got roughed up in the street by some racist teens and he found himself yet again trying to escape his fate within the school's familiar woods. “The irony of the situation forced me to smile…Years earlier, I had run through these same woods with all of my might, looking for safety, trying to get away from the campus. Tonight, I ran through the same woods looking for safety, but in the other direction” (Moore 122). The difference between the two interactions in each year show how Wes has grown and developed as a person and how he has learned to adapt and become the best version of himself despite the constant, never changing environment around him.

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The environment surrounding incarcerated Wes’s childhood home holds a very significant impact on his life. As a child, Wes was not privy to the opportunities and fortunes that many children have. Instead, Wes grew up in Baltimore which is described as, “Cherry Hill became a breeding ground for poverty, drugs, and despair…If you’re not from Cherry Hill, you don’t go to Cherry Hill. Over half of the eight thousand residents lived below the poverty line” (Moore 28-29). In situations like this where readers are aware of Wes’s final destination at the end of his life, it raises the question of whether or not his neighborhood is solely responsible for his bad choices or if he would have made the same decisions based purely on his own human nature.

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Similar to the author Wes Moore’s basketball infatuation, football for Wes provided him with a much needed sanctuary in such a violent surrounding area. Football made Wes feel like he himself was important and that he truly had meaning and purpose despite what others around him may imply. Wes describes football with his friends as, “Wes loved football, and his athletic frame made him a natural. Even if he was just going to play out in the streets with Woody and some other friends, he wore that jersey like a badge of honor” (Moore 29). The football field temporarily kept Wes out of trouble and gave him a glimpse into a better life. A life where he wasn’t in jail, where he didn’t kill innocents, and where he could start fresh and be who he wanted to be. Football and the football field were Wes’s shining lights of hope in such a dull atmosphere.

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In neighborhoods like Baltimore during the late 1900’s, drugs controlled everything and took a monopoly over the normal way of life. The drug trade was not only apparent between the older kids and adults, it involved kids too. Wes along with nearly all of his friends received their first taste of the drug business on the corner of the block as young as age 7. These kids were faced with the job of the lookout and to them, “It seemed like a sweet setup. Simply wear a headset, hang out with new friends, notify people when you see the police coming, and get paid at the end of the day. He knew what the game was, the same game that had consumed Tony and put a bullet or two in him. The same game Tony had continuously urged Wes to stay out of. But Wes rationalized. I’m not actually selling drugs” (Moore 58). While the thoughts of innocence may be why it was so normalized, the drug trade on the corner of the block and throughout the whole Baltimore neighborhood personally affected every resident and got them involved even when they tried their best not to.

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Juvenile Services Department, North Market Street, Frederick, MD

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Juvenile detention is a place that Wes was sent after the murder of Ray. Although Wes had a rough childhood influenced by a rough environment, the simple killing of innocent people is something that has become so normalized to him over the years that he doesn’t even bat an eye. When arrested, the only thing on Wes’s mind is the disapproval of his mother, “Through the car window and over the commotion in the streets, Wes tried to tell his mother to calm down. While the cops were still speaking to witnesses, he told her where the gun was. She asked him if he was the one who’d shot the boy, but Wes didn’t answer. He simply stared at his mother with a blank expression, his head still spinning from the last hour’s events” (Moore 107). Juvenile detention should have served as a final warning to Wes. A final chance to realize that the life he is choosing to live is not one that he is going to be proud of and he should pull out now while he has the chance. Unfortunately though, Wes did not end his ways.

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Lake Clifton High School, Saint Lo Drive, Baltimore, MD

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Wes’s time at highschool was brief, “He enrolled at Lake Clifton High School in East Baltimore but knew pretty quickly that he would not last long. He was two years older than the other kids in his grade from repeating a grade and losing time locked up. Teachers already dealing with overcrowded classrooms didn’t have the time to teach Wes the basics he’d missed. Wes’s attendance became sporadic, and once his first child was born, he just stopped going” (Moore 110). While this short period of time may be seemingly insignificant, it actually shows how difficult the environment around Wes was growing up. He didn’t simply drop out of college because he didn’t feel like going. After jail, Wes wanted to turn over a new leaf and start his life over headed in a positive direction. However, the restraints of him as a black man in his neighborhood with his new child made it nearly impossible for Wes to do so.

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Job Corps was a government founded foundation with the goal of promoting work in neighborhoods controlled by the drug trade where other professions were not even visible as achievable options. Although Wes had been involved with drugs and illegal activity his whole life, Job Corps gave him a new chance or a fresh start to turn his life around for the better. “Wes, by contrast, finished near the top of his class. He completed the course work and received his GED a month later. He was already reading at the level of a sophomore in college. His quick success had Wes thinking differently about his life. He proudly displayed his new diploma at home, excitedly mounting it one weekend in a frame he’d bought the week he received his test scores” (Moore 142). The progress in the positive direction that Wes made during his time at Job Corps proves how very valuable organizations such as this are and how often the excuse of not being able to escape the drug business and try new things is often not admissible.

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Jewelry Store Bethesda MD Dealers In Dreams: Goldsmiths Dealers in Dreams, Wisconsin Avenue, Bethesda, MD

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A true man's character can be judged by his actions. So the action of Wes killing Sergeant in cold blood proves that he has reached the point of no return and has stuck with it. Wes is written to have no remorse for the sergeant when, “Even after getting shot twice in the chest and once in the head, Sergeant Prothero stumbled off and ran about ten feet, finally falling in the green bushes that surrounded the jewelry store. For the next ten minutes, he fought a losing battle for his life. The two getaway cars had long since screeched out of the parking lot” (Moore 148). Wes and his decisions along the course of his life have caused him to fall into and become a part of the social norms surrounding Baltimore as a community. The jewelry store and the murder Wes committed there mark the sign of the times and how Wes is no longer able to return from his conscious actions.

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Jessup Correctional Institution, House of Correction Road, Jessup, MD

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Wes’s entire life, all of his experiences, all of the people who do and do not care about him, and all of the aspects of the neighborhood that raised him led to his final destination: the Jessup Correctional Facility. After restoring back to the life of crime and murdering a police officer in a jewelry store, Wes received, “The sentence was indeed life in prison without the possibility of parole. The guards placed their hands on Wes and shuffled him away. The hands of the state would stay on him for the rest of his life” (Moore 157). Unlike the author, Wes was not led to a life of success. His environment and decisions he made throughout the course of his life is what justified his being put in jail for the rest of his life. Whether Wes could have changed this outcome or not is something that cannot be determined.

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Alabama Airport Parking, Messer Airport Highway, Birmingham, AL

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Airplane Where Wes First Practiced for Paratrooper Training-us army airborne school alabama

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Airplane Where Wes First Practiced for Paratrooper Training-us army airborne school alabama

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In the very final chapter of his novel, Wes Moore can be seen to have become a very successful adult. In his time in the airplane above Alabama he has time to think and reflect on his life now in comparison to how it used to be in the Bronx by saying, “In the Bronx, the idea of life’s impermanence underlined everything for kids my age-it drove some of us to a paralyzing apathy, stopped us from ever thinking too far in the future…But I started to see it a little differently that day. Life’s impermanence, I realized, is what makes every day so precious…My next decision was clear. I wanted to stay at Valley Forge and attend its junior college, which would allow me to  go through the early commissioning process, receive my associates degree, and become a second lieutenant in the Army. I wanted to lead soldiers” (Moore 133). His time in the airplane reflects Wes’s final destination, the point in his life where he is able to look back with little regrets and lots of hope for the future. The airplane commemorates his journey to independence and the successful road he has taken despite his circumstances to become the man he is today.