The Other Wes Moore: Literary Analysis

The novel “The other Wes Moore,” written by Wes Moore, is a story involving two men with the same name, who grow up to live two totally opposite lives. Both boys grew up fatherless, in poverty, and living in bad neighborhoods. For the most part, their upbringings were extremely similar with minor differences, but at a point in their lives they went on to live on opposite sides of the spectrum. Wes, the author, grew up most of his life without a father because he died, but he lived with his mother and older sister. After his father’s passing, Wes’ mother, Joy, decided to move their family to the Bronx with his grandparents. When Joy had grew up in the neighborhood, it was a warm and safe community, but during the time of their move it had …show more content…
Three theories that relate back to “The Other Wes Moore,” are containment theory, differential association theory and imitation theory. In Chapter 7 of the text book, containment theory is explained as, “the assumption that internal and external controls exist… pushes from within the individual, such as resentment, hostility, and anger, along with outer pulls, such as poverty, discrimination, and associating with delinquents or gang members, may induce a person toward criminal behavior” (Anderson, 2015, p. 178). Basically, there are multiple factors that may steer a person to get involved in criminal behavior, including mental characteristics, and also sociological factors. This theory goes hand-in-hand with The Other Wes Moore because in the book, both Wes’ had outer pulls, which included poverty, an upbringing in bad neighborhoods, and fatherless households. The two main characters also had internal pulls, for example, the Other Wes Moore let his anger get the best of him multiple times which led him to be arrested; pulling him into criminal behavior. Also, the author almost had too much pride to let his mother tell him what to do, which led him to get involved with drug