LiteracywithLateja

  A theme that stood out was family support. Like both Wes’s, there are many children out there who can’t be trusted with the responsibility of making their own decisions. Their parents and the people around them have to help guide them in the right direction. The responsibility of their future should not only rest in their hands. Fortunately for Wes Moore, the author, he had the support of his family, more specifically his mother. He was getting into a lot of trouble and doing horribly in school, but his mother took initiative and sent him to military school. She saw that if he was left on his own, he would’ve probably gone down a bad path and gotten involved in the same situations that were engulfing his friends. She was determined to not see her child become another high school gang-banging dropout, and felt that military school was the best fit for him at the time. Because of her determination to see her son succeed, he was able to overcome the difficult situations he was in. Unfo

A theme that stood out was father figures, or a lack thereof. Growing up without a father was not uncommon for young boys in that time period, so the Wes’ situations were not unique per se, but it is still relevant to how their life played out and how they behaved. If that fatherly figure would’ve negatively or positively impacted their life is up for debate but the fact is, they were still fatherless. Not only did Wes Moore’s father die at a young age, but he also witnessed it. What made it worse was that it could’ve been prevented, he didn’t have to grow up without his father, but he did. Not having a father figure in his early childhood greatly affected the way Wes thought and how he behaved, whether he realized it or not. Unlike the other Wes Moore, Wes actually had a fatherly presence in his life, so having it ripped away from him, no matter how young he was when it happened, was traumatic. Losing a loved one is hard, and it’s exceptionally harder when that someone was the person