Term Paper on "Rocket Boys"

Term Paper 3 pages (1025 words) Sources: 1 Style: MLA

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Rocket Boys -- the Pain and the Delights of Being Different

Establishing your own identity is one of the most difficult aspects of transitioning from adolescence to adulthood. This was even more difficult for author and scientist Homer Hickman when he was growing up in Coalwood, West Virginia, during the conservative, conformist 1950s. The strength of Rocket Boys as a memoir is that it is a tale that is both universal and particular. On one hand, Homer must deal with quarreling parents, roughhousing at school, and insensitive authority figures like the principal of his school. These difficulties are common to most adolescents, whenever and wherever they live. But Homer's tale is also set during a unique period of American history, when America was coming to terms with its role as a superpower. It was striving to be on the cutting edge of the race to conquer space before the Russians, yet it was also an era of "Leave it to Beaver" and following in the footsteps of one's parents. Where Homer lived, the coalmines were the main source of the town's economic and social community, yet working in the coal mines was no longer a viable prospect for long-term, stable employment.

Homer's father was the mine superintendent. Homer Senior believed in the town and wanted Homer to follow in his footsteps. Homer had a clear choice -- he could obey his father or he could obey his mother. His mother dreamed of a different life for her son, that he would grow up to fulfill all of her hopes and ambitions. She had seen firsthand the dangers of mine work, as well as the glories promised by the future of aerospace engineering, proclaimed by all of the newscasters after the launch of the Russian Sputnik. Homer's parents were in constant conflict, and he could not ally himself with one or the other, without losing either his mother or his father. Homer's father was such a presence in the town that Homer has no existence beyond his father's shadow at the beginning of the book -- even his teachers called him Sonny. Although Homer loved his father, ultimately it was Elsie who drove her son to the National Science Fair at the end of the book. While Homer's parents both loved him, and Homer senior's outlook on life seems hopelessly conservative, patriarchal, reactionary, and backward-looking in the eyes of a contemporary reader. Homer's struggle resonates with any child who is the product of divorce, or simply a difficult home situation. Homer follows his dreams, but this comes to feel like a betrayal at times, as his father is locally renown for saving men's lives when there is a mine disaster, yet his mother tells him to build a rocket in defiance of his father, because "I want you to show him [Homer Senior] I'm right" (44).

Homer's life at school is also full of complications. Homer is not athletic, nor is his friends, particularly the intellectually driven outcast Quentin. Football players, rather than star students, are prized by his high school. Instead of… READ MORE

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