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Mary is the mother of Wes and Tony. Only 16 when she becomes pregnant with Tony, she is nonetheless determined to get her education and is the first person in her family to enroll in college. However, when her Pell Grant is terminated, she is forced to drop out of Johns Hopkins University and return to work full-time as a medical assistant. When Wes is a child, Mary is still young enough to go out dancing, and she has another baby a year before Tony and Wes become fathers themselves.
Mary Quotes in The Other Wes Moore
The The Other Wes Moore quotes below are all either spoken by Mary or refer to Mary. 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:
).
Chapter 1
Quotes
Johns Hopkins University was only five miles from where Mary grew up, but it might as well have been a world away. To many in Baltimore, Johns Hopkins was the beautiful campus you could walk past but not through. It played the same role that Columbia University did for the Harlem residents who surrounded it, or the University of Chicago did for the Southside. It was a school largely for people from out of town, preppies who observed the surrounding neighborhood with a voyeuristic curiosity when they weren't hatching myths about it to scare freshmen. This city wasn't their home. But after completing her community college requirements, Mary attempted the short but improbable journey from the neighborhood to the campus. Her heart
jumped when she received her acceptance letter. It was a golden ticket to another world.
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Get the entire The Other Wes Moore LitChart as a printable PDF.
Mary Quotes in The Other Wes Moore
The The Other Wes Moore quotes below are all either spoken by Mary or refer to Mary. 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:
).
Chapter 1
Quotes
Johns Hopkins University was only five miles from where Mary grew up, but it might as well have been a world away. To many in Baltimore, Johns Hopkins was the beautiful campus you could walk past but not through. It played the same role that Columbia University did for the Harlem residents who surrounded it, or the University of Chicago did for the Southside. It was a school largely for people from out of town, preppies who observed the surrounding neighborhood with a voyeuristic curiosity when they weren't hatching myths about it to scare freshmen. This city wasn't their home. But after completing her community college requirements, Mary attempted the short but improbable journey from the neighborhood to the campus. Her heart
jumped when she received her acceptance letter. It was a golden ticket to another world.
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
