October Sky is an anagram of Rocket Boys - try it!

October Sky is a movie about a coal miner's son who was inspired by the launch of Sputnik 1. A poor boy from no-where follows his dreams and eventually becomes a NASA engineer. October Sky is about the story of the Rocket Boys who began research about engineering and rockets somewhere in rural West Virginia. The film makers entitled the movie October Sky instead of Rocket Boys because when sputnik was first seen it was described as crossing the 'october sky.' The characters and the plot of the story have a parallel to the USSR's and the United States space race and the battle they had with each other to try to best the other country.

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Connecting the Movie to the History

Throughout the movie there are a lot of strained relationships between the main characters, especially Homer and his father, and the conflict between the two is stemmed from a competing viewpoint that Homer needs to follow in his fathers footsteps and work in the mines instead of following his own dreams and becoming involved in rocket science. This is a parallel of the tension between the war planners of the United States government and the citizens of the country. When USSR put Sputnik into space, America started doubting their technology and feared for the future if they didn't learn new ways to keep up. Its not an exact fit, but the tensions between the two characters and the tensions between the people and their government is close enough to recognize when watching the movie.  
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)