What “The Wire” Means to Me

I think these episodes of The Wire were really important because I felt that a lot of things were revealed by each of the characters to prove that things are never really cut and dry or black and white. Take Wallace for example. Even though he’s apart of Barksdale’s crew that doesn’t make him a bad person and we watch him change on screen. Before we would always see him feel apprehensive about what was going on but now he was making himself become involved. He lives that type of lifestyle because that was the influence he’s always around him when he was younger so that became all he knew. As the episodes went on, we began to see that he was tired of the game, the same cycle of drugs, theft and murder so much so that he was willing to turn his own people in.
I think an important scene that should be emphasized is when Wallace is home and his little sister asks for help on her homework. When he explains it to her the first time she doesn’t understand but when I explains it drug terms, she gets the answer right away. It was a parallel to when D’Angelo showed Bodie and Wallace how to play chess through street terms. It was sad to see that because at her young age, she understood the drug world more than she understand her work for school. That just goes to show how string its influence is for not only the people involved but everyone else around.
While watching these episodes, I couldn’t help but focus on the kids. With all of these horrible things that were going on, there were kids that were always present. For them it was their normal day to day life to be exposed to this type of violence and horror. There was a scene where Omar was holding this little baby while its mother was doing drugs right next them and watching Barksdale’s people set a van on far. Of course because he was a baby he didn’t understand what was going but just the fact the he was being exposed to those type of things anyway so early on. Then there’s Wallace who is only 16 and has already been in the game for years. He wants to change his life around but it’ll be hard because if he goes to school, he would start at freshman year of high school. His little siblings are in school but they are so exposed to what is going on that when there is a crime scene right next to their house, they are unfazed by it.