Justin Character Analysis in The Other Wes Moore

A close friend of Moore, Justin is one of the only other black kids at Riverdale. Justin is an excellent student and is warned by the Riverdale faculty to stay away from Moore, however Justin ignores this advice. Justin undergoes an unusual level of hardship in life; his mother dies of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma while he is in high school, and in college Justin develops a rare form of cancer himself at the same time as his father dies in a house fire. Despite this, Justin recovers and goes on to a successful career in education.

Justin Quotes in The Other Wes Moore

The The Other Wes Moore quotes below are all either spoken by Justin or refer to Justin. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

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I was becoming too "rich" for the kids from the neighborhood and too "poor" for the kids at school. I had forgotten how to act naturally, thinking way too much in each situation and getting tangled in the contradictions between my two worlds. My confidence took a hit. Unlike Justin, whose maturity helped him handle this transition much better than I did, I began to let my grades slip.

Related Characters: Wes Moore (Moore/The Author) (speaker), Justin

Page Number and Citation: 53-54

Explanation and Analysis: