One Man’s Tragedy is Another Man’s Triumph (The Other Wes Moore Literary Analysis Essay)

Some children experience incredibly difficult hardships at an early age, and many do not exactly know how to deal with them or who the right person is to look up to. Likewise, in the author Wes Moore’s 2010 memoir, The Other Wes Moore, two boys both named Wes Moore who grew up and adapted to life in similar circumstances struggled with their adaptations.  The author Wes Moore wrote the memoir after hearing about the arrest of someone with his exact same name and similar background. Author Moore utilizes multiple tone shifts to highlight to readers the difference between the emotional changes of maturity between the two boys and how either one of the boys’ lives could have ended up like the other.

In the beginning of part two, the author transitions between serious and somber in order to help readers understand the different ways in which the author Wes Moore and the Other Wes Moore first were dealing with making their first bad decisions and expressing bad behavior.  Tony confronts the Other Wes about selling drugs, and the Author Wes Moore writes, “She’d asked Wes about the shoes when they started to multiply, but after her first inquisition, she’d left the subject alone.  Tony knew better.”  The author’s variations in sentence structure in this scene of the book makes his readers feel a somber feeling as they read about Other Wes about to get into trouble with Tony for selling drugs.  The change from the words in the first sentence to the short telescopic second sentence represents Other Wes’ thoughts and him already knowing he will get into trouble, giving the audience some suspense to further highlight how much trouble Other Wes is in.

Towards the end of part two, Moore uses poignant and jaded tones in order to point out to his readers how Wes Moore and the Other Wes Moore’s paths start to become contrast from one another.  The name of one of the chapters itself represents how both boys feel at this point in each of their lives, when they’ve been making so many bad decisions and getting into trouble with the law that they don’t know exactly what to do, and the author wanted his readers to understand that both the Other Wes and the Author Wes feel lost in the middle of all their mistakes.  Author Wes writes, “His eyes widened then slitted.  His angry face broke into a devilish smile.  Just as quickly as he’d come into the room, he walked out.  This was my first morning at the military school.”  Again, Author Wes changes sentence structure to make his readers empathize with Author Wes as he begins his new life at the military school.  This type of sentence structure highlights the sarcasm Author Wes uses in order to share to his readers how jaded he feels to be going to a very strict military school.

To conclude, the Author Wes Moore used a series of different tones throughout his memoir in order to make it clear to his readers that while two boys who had almost identical sequences of events in their adolescent years, one was still able to overcome his mistakes and create a better life for himself in the future.  The Author Wes Moore wanted to make it clear to his readers that there is always a chance to fix yourself and get out of a dark path in order to find that lighter and better path.