Title Justification Paper #2: Choices and Second Chances

Chapters 4, 5, and 6 of The Other Wes Moore all belong to part two of the book, called Choices and Second Chances.  This section as a whole is about both Wes’ adolescent lives as their paths diverge in different directions.  At the beginning of the section, in chapter 4, both boys are depicted as irresponsible troublemakers who skip school and butt heads with the law.  The other Wes even awaits fatherhood and faces attempted murder charges.  By the end of the section, however, author Wes has become a high-ranking sergeant, athlete, and scholar at military school while the other Wes has been arrested for drug possession.  Choices and Second Chances is an appropriate name for this section because it recounts how both boys made regretful decisions in their lives, but only one Wes was given a second chance to redeem himself at military school. 

In Choices and Second Chances, both Wes Moores start off as reckless kids being corrupted not only by the violence, drugs, and poverty surrounding them, but also by theirs own life choices.  Both boys bring despair upon themselves through their decisions to break the law and skip school.  In this section, Wes writes that, “I could effortlessly recite hip-hop lyrics while struggling with my English class,” showing that he was a perfectly capable learner, but chose not to attend class.  He describes the other Wes saying, “Not surprisingly, without a high school diploma or job training – and with a criminal record – Wes found it almost impossible to find a job to support his growing family.”  This shows that Wes brought his misery upon himself by choosing to rashly involve himself with gun shootings and drop out of school.  Unfortunately, even though the other Wes Moore’s situation seemed worse than the author’s, it was nevertheless the author who was granted a second chance.  According to Wes, his grandparents sacrificed their savings and mortgage payments from their home so that he could become, “A platoon sergeant, a cadet master sergeant, and the youngest senior noncommissioned officer in the entire corps.”  Through his mother’s desperation and his grandparents’ financial aid, Wes’ behavior and life turned around in military school, while the other Wes Moore never became so lucky.

Choices and Second Chances is an appropriate name for the second section of Wes Moore’s novel because it describes how he and his counterpart made destructive choices, but how military school gave him alone a second chance in life.  What sets this section apart is that it begins to dissociate the two Wes’ parallel biographies, molding the images of both boys into what they are today.  While author Wes became a veteran and Rhodes Scholar due to his life-changing military education, the other Wes became a murderer because he was never given the opportunity to repair his fractured life.  With this in mind, Wes Moore may be trying to tell the reader that life is unfair in that it only grants privileges to a select few.