Wes Moore, The Author
Officially the author is named Westley Watende Omari Moore, but like the other Wes Moore he goes by “Wes.” He grows up in Baltimore before the family moves to the Bronx following the death of his father. Military school teaches him discipline and he manages to get accepted into Johns Hopkins despite having SAT scores that should by all rights have made him ineligible. The book draws a parallel between his life and that of the other Wes Moore with the distinction being that his choices made such things as his unexpected enrollment at Johns Hopkins possible.
The Other Wes Moore
The other Wes Moore is also black and also grows up in Baltimore. His social situation is slightly worse and his decision-making capacity extremely worse than what the author faces. Despite the best efforts of his mother and even his drug-dealing half-brother, he gets caught up in that same life of crime and winds up going to prison with his brother for murder.
Tony
Tony is the older half-brother who got lured into the easy money of selling drugs early on. Though he teaches his younger brother how to survive in the tough world of thugs and drugs, he actually does sincerely make an effort to convince Wes not to follow suit. Sent to prison for the same crime as his brother, he dies there of kidney failure.
Joy Moore
Joy is the author’s no-nonsense mother. Fed up with his academic troubles after managing to get him into the same school in the Bronx which John F. Kennedy attended and his increasingly sullen behavior at school, she sends him off to military school. Initially resistant in all ways, he eventually comes to credit the school with being the turning point of his life.
Mary Moore
The mother of the other Wes Moore is a strikingly coincidental symbol of the book’s consideration of the thin line between attaining a better life and being stuck in the cycle of disappointment. Mary was also accepted into Johns Hopkins like the author, but while attendance helped to raise him to another level of success, Mary Moore was forced to drop out not because of bad grades or behavioral problems or even economic difficulties of her own making, but rather due to budget slashing decisions which terminated the Pell Grants she relied upon to finance her education.
Paul White
White is Assistant Director of Admissions for Johns Hopkins when Wes Moore the author applies. He and White hit it off during the interview process and White’s intervention on his behalf is instrumental in Moore being accepted despite SAT scores several hundreds points lower than just the average of students being accepted into the university. White becomes another symbol of how two people who are more alike than not can lead lives that diverge so strikingly. The reader is encouraged to imagine how differently the lives of the two Wes Moores might played out if it was Mary Moore who benefited from an inside advocate and not the author.
Sgt. Bruce Prothero
Prothero was a 35-year-old father of five who had been with the Baltimore Police Department for thirteen years when on February 7, 2007 four men robbed a jewelry story in the mall where Prothero had a second job as a security guard. As the thieves ran out of the store with more than $430,000 worth of stolen goods, Prothero gave pursuit only to be shot three times, including point-blank in the head. The last two suspects captured were Tony and his half-brother, the other Wes Moore.
