Symbols And Themes In Homer Hickams October Sky - 923 Words

The Sputnik I, the world’s first satellite, was launched on October 4, 1957. The following day, Sonny Hickam, a 14 year-old boy from Coalwood, West Virginia, witnessed Sputnik orbit and sparked his dream to build rockets. Throughout the novel, Sonny encountered many people and friends who had helped further him along his mission to escape Coalwood and work for his inspiration, Dr. Wernher von Braun in Cape Canaveral. In Homer Hickam’s novel October Sky, he uses the themes having a dream and going after it, resistance to defeat, and self vs. society to demonstrate that anything is possible, even building rockets in a town that men only play football, mine coal, or enlist into the army. He expresses these using symbols, characters, and†¦show more content†¦This setting makes achieving dreams more difficult. They were forced to prove everyone wrong about the rocket-building. â€Å"To get out of here, you’ve got to show your dad you’re smarter than h e 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. â€Å"‘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. Failing is a part of life. Learning from it gives one the knowledge necessary for success. Although his first rocket fell apart and blew up part of his backyard fence, Sonny and his friends stayed determined. Other students and citizens of Coalwood began to tease the members about their rockets saying they’re just building bombs, but they refused to let it phase them. â€Å"My father had clearly, in