Chapter Eight & Epilogue

Chapter Eight: Surrounded (2000)

Summary: Section 1 (Wes)

Mary watches the news report about four men who held up a store, stealing $500,000 worth of jewelry. As the men left, they shot and killed Sergeant Prothero, an off-duty police officer who was working security for the store. Two of the men were apprehended, but the other two suspects—Tony and Wes Moore—were still on the run and considered armed and dangerous. Over the next few weeks, the police search Mary’s home and harass members of her family. Tony and Wes hide at an uncle’s apartment in Philadelphia. 

One day, on his way back to the apartment, Wes sees a police car nearby. Wes returns to the apartment, and Tony leaves to run errands. When Wes doesn’t hear Tony close the door on his way out, he goes downstairs to do so. There, he finds Tony surrounded by police and handcuffed on the ground. Wes is also arrested. Tony pleads guilty to being the gunman to avoid the death penalty and is sentenced to life in prison, but Wes pleads his innocence and goes to trial. Wes is found guilty and sentence to life in prison too. Wes recognizes that for the first time in his life, he knows what his future holds.

Summary: Section 2 (Moore)

Moore works as an intern for Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke, who jokingly calls him General despite Moore being a lieutenant. Moore reflects on how influential his time with Schmoke has been and how he, Moore, has achieved so much. Encouraged by an adviser at Valley Forge, Moore applied for and received a scholarship to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, where he came to truly understand all the breaks that he had that many young Black men in his situation did not. This realization inspired Moore to give back to his community. Moore receives a grant and spends a semester in South Africa, where he learns firsthand about apartheid and comes to understand true poverty as well as the impact Mandela had there. He calls home to talk to Joy, who, fatefully, informs him about a news story about a boy also named Wes Moore who is wanted for murder. Before leaving South Africa, Moore talks to his new friend, Zinzi, and considers how the journey to manhood is celebrated in South Africa and how young Black men are often feared back home.

Summary: Epilogue

Wes works as a carpenter at Jessup Correctional Institution, where he has become a devout Muslim. His family visits him regularly, and he has recently become a grandfather. Mary works in the medical field while raising six children, three of whom are Wes’s. Tony died of kidney failure in prison at the age of thirty-eight. Alicia works for the TSA and is raising the child she had with Wes. Cheryl lost custody of the children she had with Wes and died at age twenty-four when she fell down a flight of stairs.

Joy runs a consulting firm, and both of Moore’s sisters are successful. Justin and Uncle Howard served as co-best men at Moore’s wedding, and Captain Ty Hill continues to be a friend and mentor. Moore’s grandfather, James, passed away, and Moore was able to return from Afghanistan to attend his funeral. Moore received a Rhodes Scholarship and studied at Oxford University. He worked on Wall Street and then joined his platoon in Afghanistan. Later, he received a fellowship at the White House, where he worked as an assistant to Condoleezza Rice. The book concludes with Moore reflecting on what made the difference in his life. He decides that the difference was being surrounded by a community of people who encouraged him along the way.

Analysis: Chapter Eight & Epilogue

In this chapter, Moore returns to the theme of universal humanity that he introduced at the book’s beginning. In South Africa, Moore learns the Xhosa word for humanity, Ubuntu, and discovers how leaders like Nelson Mandela unite people and create peace through appealing to a recognition of shared humanity. When Moore can’t comprehend how his host mother and other Black South Africans moved past the violence, pain, and racism of the Apartheid era to create a new South Africa, she replies that they did so because Mandela asked them to. Mandela healed his country by calling on its people to forgive each other, to see themselves as part of united group despite the violent division in their past. This story provides Moore with the opportunity to draw together many of the major themes he’s addressed so far, from how young men first earn respect to how they eventually become leaders who aim to heal America’s deepest wounds.

In the final pages of the book, Moore ponders the concept of manhood and what it is that turns a boy into a man, especially in America. In South Africa, Moore and his host brother discuss the Xhosa rite of passage for young men, contrasting Moore’s discomfort at the idea of circumcision with Zinzi’s anticipation for the rite. Moore notices a young man wearing the white clothes that indicate he has completed the rite and reflects on the boy’s obvious pride, lamenting that in America, boys transitioning into manhood have become something to fear rather than celebrate. As Moore noted at Valley Forge, the respect that Ty Hill derives from the admiration of others is the kind that Moore values, and he sees it reflected in the young man. He wishes the same for young men at home, whose transition into adulthood is a “trigger for apprehension” instead of a celebration of possibility.