The Other Wes Moore nonfiction creative quiz

The Other Wes Moore nonfiction creative quiz

By: Brooke Nicholson, Annelisse Silva, Emily Grenell, and Rachel Schierman.

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Spark Notes

The Other Wes Moore One Name, Two Fates

Chapter 1 Summary

One of Wes’s few memories that he has of his dad occurred when he got in trouble for hitting his sister. His mom was very angry at him, and he was scared. His father comforted Wes and told assured him that everything would be ok. He made Wes feel safe and loved. One of the other memories Wes has of his father is watching him die. His dad was feeling awful, so he went into the hospital. After numbing his throat they sent him home and told him to rest. He died shortly after due to his throat closing.

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Wes’s mom is working hard to stay in college and provide for the family. Ever since Mary’s(Wes’s mother) mom died, it has been her goal to complete college, so when she no longer has enough money to stay in school, she is devastated. Finally, when Wes is running out the door to get to his grandmother’s house, he notices a drunk man who doesn’t even recognize who he is sitting on the couch. This man turns out to be his father.

Chapter 2 Summary

An innocent game of football with Wes and his friends quickly turns violent when some neighborhood boys join in. When one boy punches Wes in the face, Wes is stunned. This quickly turns to anger when he tastes the blood flowing from his busted lip. Wes runs home with Woody quickly after him who sees Wes with the long bladed knife. When Wes goes out to set this boy straight, knife ready, and a crazed look in his eye, the police arrest him. Luckily, his mom never finds out.

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Wes’s mother is starting to feel like things are getting too hard to handle alone now, so the family decides to move to the Bronx to live with their grandparents. The Bronx is a completely different place then his mother remembers, but she is willing to try anything. Wes decides to go to the basketball court, and realizes playing on a Bronx court is a different experience than he has ever had in his life. Every kind of person can come to this court, and Wes loved it.

Chapter 3: Foreign Ground

1987: Wes Moore

Wes was attending a public school in Baltimore. Since Wes had gotten in a lot of trouble, mostly due to the neighborhood and school systems, Wes’ mom chose to send her kid to private school.

Wes became friends with Justin. They were bonding because they lived close to each other, but also because they were two of the only black kids at their school.

Because Wes attended private school, all of his friends from his old public school would make fun of him, so Wes tried to invite his friends from both schools to play a game of baseball at his home. It ended a few innings into the game with a fight between the two different schools. This idea didn’t work out.

When Wes’s grades and discipline began to drop, his mother had reached a solution. Sending him to military school would be the best way to straighten him up and get his life on track. Wes never thought his mother would actually do this, but when his friend Justin, who was one of the smartest in his class told him she was serious, Wes began to worry.

The “Other” Wes

Tony, Mary, and Wes had moved from Baltimore City to Baltimore County due to many reasons.

Wes watched Tony earn money, and saw all of the nice things he bought with all of the money. Wes desperately wanted to earn money just like his brother, so he asked people around the neighborhood what he had to do. One of the kids sat on the corner of the street with a headset, and he told Wes that all he had to do was talk into it whenever he saw the police, and he was promised a high pay for it. Soon enough, Wes was earning hundreds by the week.

Wes’s friend Woody had made him try marijuana one day instead of going to school. Tony, Wes, and a couple of other friends had sat under a bridge and went to town with weed. Wes had said that he felt a free sensation when he smoked it, and that he would want to sell it to the people who really loved it, so they could feel that way too.

Spark Notes

Chapter 4: Marking Territory

The “Other” Wes

When Wes began selling drugs, he was making a lot of money doing it. Therefore, he started having a lot of new items such as shoes, shirts, shorts, etc. when his mother asked him where he received all of the money from, Wes said that he was a DJ in the local area. Wes had kept the drugs which he was selling in multiple shoe boxes that were in his room.

When Tony accused Wes of selling drugs, he fought his brother, saying that was false. Mary failed to believe it as well. After such accusations, Mary started to daily look through Wes’s room. When she opened the shoe boxes, she was stunned to find exactly what she hoped not to. Drugs. She was completely furious, so she flushed everything down the toilet, all thousands of dollars’ worth of it.

When Wes got home, he had seen what she had done, and stormed out of the house, angry. He went straight to his girlfriend’s house. Not thinking, she had agreed to make her house his new place of business.

“Author” Wes

There was a large range of success in academics between the Moore children. Wes never showed up to class, Nikki went to three different high schools in four years, and Shani had with reading scores higher than her older siblings. However, all of the siblings were very protective of each other and looked out for each other if anything ever happened.

One day, Wes was hanging out with his friend Shea. They both sprayed “KK” with a circle around it on a wall. Right after, a police car caught them, and suddenly they were in handcuffs in the back of a cop car. Wes had the life scared out of him. Luckily, the officers had let them go on a warning and told them never to do it again. As, they both nodded in agreement, soon enough they were back on the prowl.

Chapter 5 Summary:

Wes was already having trouble in school dealing with bad grades and ditching classes. These things caused the dean to call Wes’s mother. After Wes accidentally hit his sister Shani’s lip, his mother decided to send him to military school. Wes hated military school; he wanted to come home. Austin, a sergeant there, gave him a map to leave the military school, which was a trick. This caused Wes a visit with Colonel Batt. In the other hand, the other Wes Moore faced getting a girl pregnant (whom he met in the bus on the way to school). Tony told their mother about this on their little brother’s first birthday. His mother said nothing. Although he was going to have a baby, that didn’t stop him from hanging out with other girls. This caused him to get arrested when he and his friend started shooting at the boyfriend of a girl Wes was with. It started with yelling between the girl and her boyfriend, then shoving between the boyfriend and Wes. Finally it caused Wes to get arrested for actually shooting the guy.

Quotes:

“I was taught to remember, but never question. Wes was taught to forget, and never ask why” (Moore 4).

“Young boys are more likely to believe in themselves if they know that there’s someone, somewhere, who shares that belief. To carry the burden of belief alone is too much for most young shoulders” (Moore 28).

“… The chilling truth is that Wes’s story could have been mine: the tragedy is that my story could have been his” (Moore 180).

“Failing doesn’t make us a failure. But not trying to do better, to be better, does make us fools” (Moore 185).

“… read these words but, more important, absorb their meanings and create your own plan to act and leave a legacy” (Moore 186).

“Knowing went to fight and when to seek peace is wisdom” (Moore 168).

“Life’s impermanence… is what makes every single day precious. It’s what shapes our time here. It’s what makes it so important that not a single moment be wasted (Moore 133).

key facts

Key Facts

Full Title: The Other Wes Moore One Name, Two Fates

Author: Wes Moore

Type of Work: Novel

Genre: Nonfiction; Memoir

Language: English

Date of First Publication: 2010

Publisher: Spielger & Grau

Narrator: The Author, Wes Moore

Point of View: 1st person when talking about himself and 3rd person when talking about the Other Wes Moore

Setting: Baltimore, Maryland

Major Conflict: The characters deal with bad influences in the street they live in and being fatherless

Theme: Family influence, poverty, and pressure

Tense: Past

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Publishing company info

Created byline info

The Other Wes Moore One Name: Two Fates

By: Wes Moore

Group members: Brooke Nicholson, Rachel Schierman, Annelisse Silva, and Emily Grennell.

About the main character(s)

The author Wes Moore- He was a stubborn child with bad childhood, who started selling and doing drugs, getting in fights, and receiving bad grades. He had learned to change his life around once he entered military school. From here, he graduated from military college, and lived a very successful life.

The Other Wes Moore- He was born in the same streets as the author Wes Moore, and raised with a similar background. However, his decisions are the reason for their two different stories. Wes is currently in prison serving a life sentence for a robbery which led to the death of a police officer.

Setting:

The setting of The Other Wes Moore is Baltimore, Maryland. This is the town where they both lived.

About the author:

Wes Moore was born in 1978. Him and his sisters were raised by their single mother. He grew up in a “ghetto” Baltimore neighborhood. There, Wes had a shaky start with drug dealing, grades, and fist fights. That’s when his mother decided to send him to private military school. Wes graduated as a com­mis­sioned offi­cer from Val­ley Forge Mil­i­tary Col­lege, and in a different degree from Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity. Wes also later became a Rhodes scholar. He also served in the United States Army.

From the newspapers:

“This book was very well written and truly inspiring …” [Emily Grenell]

“This novel is very moving and I like how it shows both point of views. ” [Annelise Silva]

“The intriguing narrative teaches us all a life lesson about choosing the right path.” [Brooke Nicholson]

“A very powering story. It shows how some can succeed and some can fail in society.” [Rachel Schierman]

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