TOWM Chapters 7-8 epilogue & afterward

    The most prominent theme of these sections is seeing the effects of an environment upon a person not being taught about what is right or wrong. There could be arguments about the other Wes Moore needing to make the right choices because no one forced him to make those decisions, but there is something missing about that conclusion. While the other Wes Moore could have made better decisions, he was never really given the opportunity to do so through his domestic life, environment, and the information that he has gotten. 

    This is similar to the situation from Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” where the environment and lack of support was the cause of him descending into a path of destruction.  While it does not justify his actions, it is important for someone in a child-state to get the support they need.  The only guidance that the other Wes Moore received was little to none that could have saved him.  He had fallen victim to his environmental pressures where they glamorized selling drugs to make money, lack of a father figure, and authoritative figures who were hypocrites and didn’t enforce rules.  He did not get the right guidance as a child to have the correct foundation to supplement his decision making skills in the future. While on the other hand, the author Wes Moore describes his relationship with his mother where, “I’d spend so much of my life running from her, trying to show her I didn’t need her as much as I thought. She’d spent much of the same time being an unrelenting disciplinarian”. Especially since both of the young men were living in a similar environment, the author Wes Moore’s mother had put in much more effort to keep her son on the right path.  While the other Wes Moore’s mother did not neglect his general needs, it was hard for him to learn to stay away from the wrong people and saw it as a way of life.  She essentially neglected the life lessons and important rules that should be followed to keep him out of trouble, handling emotions, and ways to deal with problems. 

    Another aspect of the other Wes Moore to point out is that because of the lack of a familial structure he had to thoroughly teach him what was right and wrong, he ended up thinking of short term solutions to his problems without thinking of the consequences.  This had become a problem from when he got involved in the drug dealing business, as it filled a part of his life that it lacked.  The business he had got into was structured and gave him a familial bond that was gratifying to him. Later on in life, the other Wes Moore tried to change his life because of his girlfriend, Cheryl, being addicted to drugs. He tried doing small jobs and graduated from a program that gave him some opportunities to make clean money, but that essentially failed too because of the lack of foundation he had. With the pressures of his girlfriends needing him to pay child support and an unsustainable wage that he made, he had looked to get easy money from a robbery.  Rather than dealing with the trials and tribulations of life, he had been essentially forced by his environmental situation and past actions that have conditioned him to be on this path.  The other Wes Moore, similar to Frankenstein, was a good kid who did not receive the fundamentals to keep them away from spiraling into bad things.