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Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
The Importance of Community
Finding and belonging to a community is a powerful motivator for both Moore and Wes, whose comings of age are juxtaposed with the decline of their urban neighborhoods. For example, when Joy was a child, her Bronx neighborhood was close-knit, with residents looking out for each other, but by the time Moore grows up there, increasing crime has shattered the neighborhood’s sense of community. In an attempt to set him up for a better life, Joy sends Moore to Riverdale, a prestigious private school, but this change undermines his connection to the local community, which leads him to engage in vandalism and other minor crimes. Not only does sending Moore away contribute to the neighborhood’s decline, but it also frays his sense of belonging. As one of few Black students at Riverdale, Moore feels isolated and alienated, and he also feels like an outsider among the kids in his neighborhood, who all go to the local public school.
Ultimately, Moore expands his idea of community to stretch beyond his immediate neighborhood. His love of hip-hop and books, as well as his dedication to Valley Forge Military Academy and, later, the military, support his sense of connection with others. During his semester in South Africa, he is fascinated and moved by the community spirit he sees there and the story Mama tells him about the corrosive effects of segregation and apartheid. The nation’s intentionality in building community impresses him. The communities that Moore belongs to help him find his place in the wider human community, encourage him to develop strong, supportive ties with like-minded people, and even allow him to feel a deeper connection with people living in disadvantaged neighborhoods like the one where he grew up.
One of the biggest differences between Moore and Wes is that Moore’s life provides him with several opportunities for community that Wes never has access to. Though Wes is bright and has clear leadership potential, his only sense of community comes from the streets, and that connection exerts a strong hold over him. As a child, he gets a sense of identity and community from sports, taking special pride in his place on Northwood’s recreational football team. However, his frequent moves and his early brushes with the law remove him from this environment. By the time he is a teenager, Wes has found his community in his group of drug dealers, who see each other as brothers and pride themselves on their tight bonds. Ultimately, this sense of belonging is unstable precisely because the activities that bond them together are so dangerous. Wes’s community does not provide the empowering support that Moore’s communities provide him, but it is the only option Wes has.
The Fragility of Opportunity
Though Moore is seen as a success story, he is keenly aware of how fragile and rare access to opportunity is for anyone who grows up in poverty in an inner city. Multiple people in both Moore’s and Wes’s lives preach the value of education, but the support needed to achieve it can prove elusive. When Mary’s chance at a college education evaporates when she loses her Pell Grant, it reveals that federal financial aid policy, created by distant bureaucrats, has an enormous impact on her opportunities. Wes faces a similar struggle after succeeding at Job Corps. Despite his impressive performance in the program, he finds limited opportunities after graduating due to his lack of higher education and his lengthy criminal record. Rather than struggling to support his growing family on minimum-wage jobs, he returns to drug dealing, which offers him a better financial opportunity than his other limited options. Moore’s family also sees the value in education, but his college-educated, professional mother and grandparents understand how to provide him with a wider range of traditional opportunities than Wes can access. With the help of her community, Joy is able to pay for Moore’s education in prestigious schools, which sets him up to pursue a college education.
As Moore laments, kids in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods often struggle to distinguish between a second chance and a last chance. The lack of a safety net means people don’t have any leeway to learn from mistakes, since their poor choices create barriers that are eventually too difficult to overcome. When Moore ignores the second chance the Bronx cop gives him when he is caught graffitiing buildings, it mirrors how Wes failed to accept his brother Tony’s advice to look for a life beyond drug dealing and crime. The fundamental difference between the two protagonists is that Moore changes his behavior before facing his last chance. Even though he initially sees Valley Forge as a terrible punishment, it is a viable second chance for him, and it significantly changes his life by opening up further opportunities to him. Wes, meanwhile, is never able to rebound from the poor decision-making of his youth, even though Job Corps appears to be a significant opportunity at one point.
The Difficulty of Escaping Generational Cycles
Wes’s and Moore’s families both struggle to break well-entrenched cycles of poverty and trauma. Wes’s mother, Mary, follows the path of her own parents when she becomes a teen mother, and both of her sons’ fathers are alcoholics. The cycle continues when Wes and Tony become teen fathers, and when Wes becomes a grandfather in his early thirties, it becomes clear that the following generation will continue this pattern. Addiction also plays a key role in Wes’s generational cycle, because of his partnership with Cheryl, whose heroin addiction limits her ability to help him raise his family. Moore observes that Wes may not have struggled as much if he hadn’t had to support a family, but Wes’s children also inspire him to strive for a better life.
Moore’s family struggles to break a generational cycle of violence. Joy loathes violence against women because of her own experience with an abusive spouse, but the only response to it she knows is violence in return. As Moore explains, his mother has “Thomas hands,” suggesting that violence is a deeply entrenched facet of discipline in her family. Though Moore’s homelife depicts yet another generational cycle of trauma, it also shows a potential path toward breaking this cycle. One of Moore’s only memories of his father is how Westley gently but firmly intervenes when Joy tries to chase down Moore, then a toddler, after she sees him hitting his sister, Nikki. Westley points out to her how confusing and ineffective it is for her to teach Moore not to hit by hitting him and cursing at him. He then disciplines Moore effectively, by explaining why he shouldn’t hit people. Years later, in frustration after a teenaged Moore again hits his sister, Joy slaps him hard twice. In that moment, Moore himself is the one who breaks the cycle of violence by not retaliating against her physically.
