Tony's Perception Of Color Blindness

Tony is very smart but also quite poor. His family didn't have enough money to send him to school but since he was smart and the nuns had faith in him they were able to provide him with a scholarship: “His family could not afford to send him to school. But the nuns believed in him because he was smart and a good boy.” (McKay 44). This shows how tony was viewed as a person before everything with the LRA happened. Tony also had a dream to become a priest when he was older. He never openly said it but it was very obvious to others; “ He has never actually said to his friends, but everyone knew that tony really wanted to become a priest.” (McKay 45). This shows that Tony wanted to go to school to repay god and how much of a good kid we was and how he didn't deserve to have to become a rebel soldier.

Tony, Wes's older brother, serves as his primary role model throughout his life. As a child, Wes looks up to the Tony, who holds his own street corner and sells drugs. "To Wes, Tony was a 'certified gangsta.' Tony had started dealing drugs... before he was ten. By the time he was fourteen, Tony had built a fierce reputation in the neighborhood. Despite his skinny frame and a baby face, his eyes were lifeless and hooded, without a spark of optimism" (27). All Wes wants is to be like Tony. He looks up to his older brother and is incapable of seeing his flaws with the drug dealing and violence in his life. By the time Tony is a teenager, the drug game has made him "lifeless". Wes decides to look up to this lifeless figure, even though Tony has barely any hope for his future. Wes respects Tony's "fierce reputation". Tony, instead of working hard to gain his respect, intimidates and threatens others for it. Wes is taught that this is the only way to gain respect, because there is no one else in his life who shows him the right

Throughout the novel Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison works with many different images of blindness and impaired vision and how it relates to perception. These images prove to be fascinating pieces of symbolism that enhance the themes of impression and vision within the novel. From the beginning of the novel when the narrator is blindfolded during the battle royal to the end where Brother Jack's false eye pops out, images of sight and blindness add to the meaning of many scenes and characters. In many of these situations the characters inability to see outwardly often directly parallels their inability to perceive inwardly what is going on in the world around them. Characters like Homer A. Barbee and Brother Jack believe they are all knowing

He grew up without a father, it was because of this loss that he often wondered what it would be like to have one. The fact that his own brother was hanging around the wrong people and falling deeper, and deeper into the world that demolishes any chances of a decent future for young people. A world full of violence, drugs, and imprisonment. Tony undoubtedly influenced Wes for the worst. This is obvious when the author writes, “To Wes, Tony was a “certified gangsta.”

In Wes Moore’s 2010 book “The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates,” two men with the same name, born blocks apart who are raised in an identical poverty and drug plagued neighborhood are examined. What author Wes Moore discovers in his conversations with inmate Wes Moore, is that their lives were remarkably similar growing up. Given their current situations in life, their paths to get there take shape through a series of interchangeable decisions and life events. One Wes through mentorship in decision-making ends up a Rhodes Scholar and decorated war veteran, while the other Wes minus the mentoring ends up in prison serving a life sentence. The age-old cry, “It takes a village,” resonates in Moore’s examination of his mirrored upbringing.

     Although the characters believed they lived a good life, in my own perspective I saw the exact opposite. The good life is demonstrated through success, success through a career, education, goals, and love. The gangs only had one another and without the support of that gang, these boys would not exist as individual human beings. The Jets did not want to have jobs, and they mocked the ex-gang member, Tony, for leaving the gang to make a future for himself. Life outside the gang was not an option for the Jets. None of the boys had any future plans or felt the need for anything else in their lives. Tony did not live the good life, but he did have dreams. He knew there was a better life for him out there, and parting from the gang allowed him to search for that life. He wanted to get away from the city, have a peaceful home, and a wonderful wife. His future was important to him; he wanted to be a successful man. Tony’s character contradicts the beliefs of the Jets, allowing viewers to see into the minds of the gang members and their beliefs about the good life.

The other Wes Moore written by Wes Moore is about two completely different life stories that have completely different outcomes. Two young men with the same name, lived in the same neighborhood, yet they chose two different paths to walk through life. The author chose going to school and getting an education. The other Wes Moore chose the path of drugs and alcohol. Each Wes had events that help shape the path they would walk on through life.

Topic of Choice: Cite and Analyze three specific characters or events which lead Tony 's’ revelations that would later foster his religious ambivalence

point in the way of Tony’s thinking. Rather than being torn between which side of the

“Tony was exhausted. Tired from the beating he just gave Wes. Tired from repeating himself. ‗If you won‘t listen, that‘s on you. You have potential to do so much more, go so much further. You can lead a horse to water, but you can‘t make him drink right?‘…That was the last time Tony ever tried to talk to Wes about the drug game.” – pgs.

The next step in Tony?s spiritual journey begins when Tony sees another god and wonders whether this god is any kinder to his people than God. Tony believed that God should have forgiven Narciso for his sins and not Tenorio because Tony was partial to Narciso. God is not partial and when he gives forgiveness to one man he must also give it to another, but Tony does not like this. God?s response was ?I will...if you also ask me to forgive Tenorio.'; (173) Tony can?t believe that his God would think of forgiving an evil man like Tenorio. Once Narciso dies and Tony sees the beauty of the golden carp Tony starts to wonder even more whether God is really as good and wonderful as Tony has been taught he is. Tony starts to

(26) he feels his soul grow under Ultima guidance. One of Tony’s obstacles in life is to become a man. His mother does not want him to become a man but his father argues saying “everything Tony sees and does makes him a man”(37) but Maria says that it is a sin for a boy to grow to be a man by saying that “life destroys the pureness God gives”. (36) but this is not the only diction Tony has to make. His first dream portrays his insecurity about his identity. He has to choose between the two is he a “fine vaquero” or a “farmer-priest”(9) He is confused, on one side its his mother and on the other its his father. Who should he become? He is also confused about which God to believe in. the golden Carp, who he marvels at the “bright golden-pagan God”(114) on the other side the catholic God “who could not forgive”(120) He does not understand why God cannot forgive Narcisio who is a good man while the Virgin Mary can forgive the evil Teronio. Tony is confused throughout most of the novel. Tony believes that the women always forgive, therefore in his child’s logic he thinks women in general do not judge but always forgive. He has a lot of decisions to make. He remembers his dream where he sees Andrew at Rosie’s and remembers what Andrew had told him in his dream that Andrew “will wait and not enter until (Tony) looses (his) innocence”.(85) Tony’s belief that

Tony was very protective over his little brother. In the book it says, “[Wes] loved his brother but had learned to ignore his occasional 'do as I say, not as I do' tirades. Tony, by contrast, was desperately trying to give his little brother information he thought he needed, the kind of information that Tony never got. Tony felt his little brother's life could be saved, even if he felt his own had already, at age fourteen, passed the point of no return.” (Moore 27). This shows that Tony doesn’t want Wes to join the drug business like he did because he knows it could have ruined his life. Despite what Tony told him, Wes started to distribute drugs which eventually, he got caught up with the

     Tony himself went through the process of growing up and losing his innocence as well throughout the novel. In the beginning of the whole story, Tony is concerned with nothing much but his own little world like every child ought to be. His worries and experiences are really nothing compared to what he had in store for him later on, but although his later experiences would be rather unreal it still would be how any child would grow up, very gradual learning and taking things in stride. So as the story

3). Tony has been in and out of jail since he was an adolescent. He hits, steals, and he destroys property and says he enjoys doing so "because people are stupid". He shows little remorse for his crimes, behaves impulsively, and lacks empathy for the rights and feelings of others.