October Sky- Overcoming Obstacles

Brother’s pride and obsession with helping Doodle succeed actually takes away from his goals to help Doodle. Brother states “I prepared a terrific development program for him” (4). Brother’s original intentions were to teach Doodle how to walk, run, swim, climb trees, and fight, which was a supportive thing for him to do. Although Brother believes that this all will help Doodle develop his skills, he ends up hurting Doodle by overworking him. Later, Brother says, “I should have already admitted defeat, but my pride wouldn’t let me” (4). Since Brother wants Doodle to succeed, he pushes him over the limit, which was a

I believe that everyone, no matter how big or small, also has challenges and obstacles which test them. Although the difficulty and frequency of these setbacks are not set in stone, everyone has to face these challenges to move on in life. Personally, one of the greatest challenges for me is to become what I want to be. In order to reach my goal I must finish university at a high standard, then move onto medical school to finish my education. Although, my challenges do not align with Homer’s, one bridge that can connect us, is the fact that our fathers are extremely demanding. Now, John Hickam wants Homer to work in the coal mine instead of Homer’s optimistic view of pursuing rocketry. This contradicts my father’s belief, which is of me being optimistic and becoming something which involves tons of hard work. This places a great deal of pressure on me in my studies. My method of achieving this will be, of course, working hard and such. However, it also plays a big part in me actually becoming what I want to be and not just what other people want. With me being on the same page as my father, I know what I am going to do in my life and will continue to pursue it until I reach my

I recite, “success doesn't come serene, success must be earned, success requires determination” (Anonymous Writer). Everyone has an endeavour to become extraordinary. Consequently, many people do not possess the obligatory attributes to accomplish an aim or motive in their lives. In the film “October Sky,” Homer Hickam the protagonist overcame a sequence of calamities along his journey to become a successful rocket fabricating engineer. He clawed his way out of an ‘unenlightened cave’ where coal mining was his only fate. Where there lacked serendipity, there was no surmise for someone as impecunious and inauspicious as him to become successful. Moreover, the two utmost points of discussion I will address consist of Homer overcoming

The movie Hoop Dreams shows you the difficulties and obstacles that come in the way of dreams. Although it's said that if you believe in a dream long enough it will come true, but in Hoop Dreams and A Raisin in the Sun you are shown the harsh realities of the falseness of that statement. And that the reality of a dream not coming true hits you like a brick wall.

Homer H. Hickam Jr.’s memoir, Rocket Boys, pursues the idea that hard work and determination leads to success. The main character, Sonny, transforms into a successful person despite all the obstacles in his life. His perseverance ultimately leads him to successfully achieving his goal. The enthralling journey begins with the first passage of the book, which states the difficulty that Sonny dealt with in his childhood before he could go out and follow his heart to achieve what he wanted most. “Until I began to build and launch rockets, I didn’t know my hometown was at war with itself over its children and that my parents were locked in a kind of bloodless combat over how my brother and I would live our lives” (Hickam 1). Sonny’s parents both

Anne Frank once said, “The final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.” While their childhood and the opinions of others have some impact, a person has just as much power to decide who they want to be, as proven in the memoirs Rocket Boys by Homer H. Hickam and The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. These protagonists are validation that despite outside pressures, a person can grow up to be anyone they want to be. Similarly, for Homer “Sonny” Hickam of Rocket Boys, working in Coalwood’s coal mines seems essentially inevitable, since the town focuses on a small range of activities. Hickam states that, "Only coal mining was more important in Coalwood than high school football. Sputnik, and anything else, was going to always

The narrator took pride in teaching his brother how to walk. Later on, he began to teach Doodle other abilities. But the narrator had only taught his brother how to do other activities for his own benefit. During a storm the narrator and Doodle got trapped in, the narrator left Doodle behind. The narrator was too prideful to turn around and help his brother, and his brother ended up dying. The narrator was selfish in teaching his brother how to walk and more out of embarrassment, and since he got paraded for teaching his brother he continued to help his brother, only to have his brother die. Having too much pride can hurt your loved ones because you are not aware that you have become too selfish to care for others, like your own

A person’s childhood very often helps establish who they grow up to be. This idea has proved to be true in the memoir Rocket Boys by Homer H. Hickam. Coalwood, West Virginia was not only Sonny’s hometown, but also an influential character. Coalwood was very uniform and all the citizens took an interest in similar activities during the time-period in which he grew up. For example, "Only coal mining was more important...than high school football. Sputnik, and anything else, was going to always come in a distant third” (Hickam 27). This mentality causes an issue for Sonny, as he aspires to pursue an alternate career in rocket-building. While most of the townspeople are apprehensive of his plans initially, a majority begin to respect his choices

This setting makes achieving dreams more difficult. They were forced to prove everyone wrong about the rocket-building. “To get out of here, you’ve got to show your dad you’re smarter than he thinks. I believe you can build a rocket. He doesn’t. I want you to show him I’m right and he’s wrong” (Hickam 51). Sonny’s mother and a small number of others believed they could build rockets, but everyone else, including his father, was against it. People did not just leave Coalwood after high school without a scholarship or money saved for college. “‘You’ve got to get out of Coalwood, Sonny,’ Mom said. ‘Jimmie will go. Football will get him out. I’d like to see him a doctor, or a dentist, something like that. But football will get him out of Coalwood, and then he can go and be anything he wants to be’” (Hickam 50). Elsie did not want her children to get trapped in the small mining town because she knew it was only a matter of time before its economic stability went bad. She also wanted them to be more than just another miner, she believed in her kids more than they did at times.

In October Skys, Sonny and the Rocket Boys faced nearly impossible odds and persevered through all of the obstacles they encounter. They were truly amazing young boys with courage, determination, and a will to do what they had their minds set on no matter what life threw at them.

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new”- Socrates. Cassie Logan, Stacey Logan and T.J. Avery experience change throughout the book Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor. In the book, the Logan family deals with a great deal of racial prejudice and issues trying to gain enough money to pay off the mortgage on their land. Even though Cassie, Stacey, and T.J. have quite different personalities all three of them changed drastically from what they have experienced. Since the beginning of the book T.J. used his friends, he thought friends came with benefits.

October Sky In the October Sky directed by Joe Johnston, the main character, Homer Hickam, was inspired by his high school teacher, Miss Riley who affect him a lot on the way to success. In this movie, Homer Hickam is a student with typical American Dream which is to design a space rocket, and then he and his friends (Quentin Wilson, Roy Lee Cooke and Sherman O’Dell) start a series of trials with the encouragement from their teacher Miss Freida J. Riley. Homer Hickam’s father John Hickam is a miner manager who want his son to be a miner as him, so he strongly disagreed with his son’s dream. After conquering lots of obstructions, the Rocket Boys won the champion of the national science fair and went to college with scholarship.

Throughout the book, Homer is in a constant battle dealing with his dreams and reality. Homer’s dream is to become an engineer working NASA while his father wants him to work at the coalmines, staying in West Virginia. People, especially his father, do not believe that Homer will truly be able to achieve his dreams. His parents constantly worry that his dreams are unreachable and that he will become like the rest of the people that stayed in Coalwood, living/ working the average day in the coalmines. However, if you put your mind to something anything is possible. In Rocket Boys, Homer follows his dreams, has ambition, and most importantly accepts his success/failure when it is due.

the younger brother Danny is forced to write a paper about his brother 's influence on him. The

All my life, almost all of it, I have lived in the shadow of my older brother. An extreme extrovert, athletic, funny, and suffering from ADD my brother is what you call the ultimate “attention hog”. If he is in the room he makes sure that all eyes are on him. In the short story, Tomorrow is Too Far our narrator tells of a similar feeling of sibling favoritism and rivalry. Our narrator describes in the opening, “Grandmama let only my brother Nonso climb the trees to shake a loaded branch, although you were a better climber than he was.” (Adichie 311). Her complaint is something I can relate to and feel her frustration of not being seen or recognized for her talents. Often, I will be telling an epic basketball win story only to be cut short, and attention turned to my older sibling who seems to always overshadow me.