Friday, June 12, 2015

One of the “other” Wes Moore’s female “friends” says on page 102, “Get up and walk me out! Be a gentleman.” How might this example relate or not relate to Wes’s personal values in The Other Wes Moore?

The exasperation of the other Wes Moore's girlfriend tells us a lot about his character. This is someone who treats women as little more than sex objects and bright, shiny trinkets to wear on his arm to bolster his masculinity. The very idea of being a gentleman, or anything like one, is simply an alien concept to him.
Coming from an unstable family background in which he never knew his father, Wes has no understanding or appreciation of the value of forming stable, meaningful relationships. So he goes through life drifting aimlessly from one woman to another without the slightest intention of settling down. He remains effectively trapped in a state of arrested development from which he's unable or unwilling to escape. As such, Wes can never really be a gentleman because he isn't even a man in the fullest sense of the word. Emotionally speaking, he's little more than an adolescent.

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