Thesis Statement
Poverty, drugs and the lack of opportunities in the neighborhood made it difficult for Sampson Davis and his friends to visualize going to college. Davis, one of the three main characters in the book The Pact: Three Young Men Make a Promise and Fulfill a Dream grows up in a culture of crime and drugs where young people’s route out of poverty is to take part in crime rings. Davis was growing up in a place that did not encourage college education. Young people did not think there was hope so they just followed what the older boys were doing.
The lack of role models or individuals in the neighborhood who had made it out of the crime infested neighborhood made it difficult for Davis and his friends to that there was no way out.
Davis was already involved in selling crack and crime rings and his friends thought that there was no way he was leaving the easy drug money life for college. In addition to selling drugs, Davis also hung around older guys who had not been to college. It was hard for him to think that he would be the first one to do what everybody else had failed to do.
Davis already had a crime record and this was going to work against him in his application. He had been to a detention center and people who went there did not have a big future.
The kind of job that Davis did was not enough to help him pay for college. He was not sure he would afford college as well.
Works Cited
Davis, Sampson., Jenkins, George and Hunt Rameck. The Pact: Three Young Men Make a
Promise and Fulfill a Dream. New York, NY: Riverhead Books, 2003.
