Chapter 3: Foreign Ground-Theme Analysis

 The themes in this chapter are drugs, poverty, life choices, and importance of education.

 Drugs/ Poverty:

-"There was so much money to be made that drug gangs rapidly expanded their ranks, sucking in some of our best friends…" (Page 51)

    The author Wes is living in the Bronx at this point in the book.  Drugs were very common in the Bronx, and this quote demonstrates that.  It shows that Wes was constantly surrounded by drugs, and he faced the danger of getting involved with them wherever he went.  Several of his friends were sucked in by the drug dealers, which shows that it was very difficult not to become a drug dealer.

-" Every week I sat down to create a schedule for my clothes. I had three 'good' shirts and three 'good' pairs of pants.  I would rotate their order, mixing and matching so that each day I had on a fresh combination." (Page 52)

  This quote falls under the theme of poverty.  Wes was unable to afford clothes that would be "good" enough to wear to school.  He wanted to fit in, and he realized that he was poorer than many of his peers.  The fact that he rotated his clothes showed that he didn't want his peers to know how poor he was.  He only wore the shirts and pairs of pants he deemed acceptable to wear in order to fit in, since he couldn't afford other clothes that would allow him to fit in with his peers.

 Life Choices/ Importance of Education:

- " ...I began to let my grades slip.  Disappointed with Ds, pleasantly satisfied with Cs, and celebratory about a B, I allowed my standards at school to become pathetic." (Page 54)

  This quote falls under the theme of life choices.  He allowed his grades to slip, which started him on a downhill path.  His decision to stop trying in school meant that he started down the wrong path, prompting his mom to send him to military school.  If he had not been sent to military school, that decision could have destroyed his future.  It also falls under the importance of education by showing that education was his only way out of trouble.

-"After hearing more details, Wes was sold.  It seemed like a sweet setup. Simply wear a headset, hang out with new friends, notify people when you see police coming, and get paid at the end of the day." (Page 58)

   This quote also falls under life choices.  This incident marked the start of his involvement with drugs. If he had not accepted the offer, he would not have gone down the path that he had.  Even though he was only looking out for police, he eventually started to actually sell drugs. The choice that he made ultimately affected the rest of his life, and it led to him going to prison.

-"Later in life I learned that the way many governors projected the number of beds they'd need for prison facilities was by examining the reading scores of third graders." (Page 54)

  This quote mainly falls under the importance of education because it shows how the government measured the number of people who would need assistance or who would go to prison when they got older.  If the scores were low, it showed that those students were likely to go down the wrong path. The higher the score, the less likely it was that a student would go down the wrong path. Education was a child's ticket out of trouble.