The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates

What does family mean to you? If you 're like most people, then you most likely believe that we are products of our environment. This idea could not be better represented than the two young boys that this story is about. In “The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates,” written by Wes Moore, two fatherless young boys that grow up with the same name and that live in the same neighborhood couldn 't have taken more different paths in life. Wes Moore becomes a Rhodes Scholar, veteran and a college graduate. The “other” Wes Moore becomes deeply involved with the drug game and is mixed up with the law almost all of his life. The reason why one Wes Moore became a college graduate and the other became a drug dealer is because of the family environment that they have grew up in. Although there families had different expectations, they both exceeded them.

Wes Moore’s mother sacrificed everything she had to get him a good education and made sure that he wouldn 't get caught up in the drug game. The “other” Wes Moore’s mother told him not to use drugs but she was using them herself. They both grew up without a father but each for different reasons. Wes Moore 's father had died when wes was only 3 from a rare disease that essential made his body suffocate itself. “My father 's body suffocated itself.” (15) Wes helplessly watched as his father suffer. The “other” Wes’s father is alive and well but chose not to be in his son 's life. Wes’s parents tried to make a positive environment for their son, while the “other” wes’s parents left him to fend for himself in the environment that he was born into. Both of the wes’s parents had expectations for them at which they both exceeded, the only difference was that they were two totally different