Drew

In the movie, October Sky, the lead character, Homer, has a dream of creating rockets to fly into outer space. He lived in the town of Coalwood. The town was very small, and most people never made it out of the town when they grew up, they usually wound up working in the coal mine. Usually a few boys that were good enough at football to get a football scholarship were able to make it out, but majority never could. But Homer had a different idea when he started finding an interest in rocketry. There were several obstacles standing in his way though.

The biggest obstacle in Homer’s way was his father. His father was foreman of the coalmine. Mining coal was his life, and he expected it to be the same for Homer. I don’t think he was a very highly educated man, so he didn’t know much about the rockets and things that Homer was building, which made him that much more frustrated with the building that Homer was doing. He was a very stubborn man and didn’t really like change. When Homer started building rockets in his basement, he let it slide for a little bit, but then told him he shouldn’t be doing it and threw his rocket stuff away. Homer was able to overcome his father though, but not before giving up and going to work in the mine. It was Mrs. Riley that showed Homer sometimes you don’t have to listen to everyone and do what your heart tells you. He took her advice and quit working in the mine, got his friends together, and started working on their science fair project. His father ended up supporting his son, even though it wasn’t what he wanted Homer to do.

Another obstacle in Homer’s way was that he didn’t know how to do the complicated math that was associated with building rockets. He had to find out what he was doing the hard way most of the time. The majority of his first rockets blew up on the launch pad, so they had to go in and make a whole new rocket and change little things to see if that would work better. By testing each one, they were able to figure out what was wrong, and they could go back and fix it until they got it all right.

A final obstacle that was in Homer’s way was when they shot off one of their rockets, they were accused of starting a forest fire. They had to stop shooting their rockets off, but Homer was determined to show everyone that it wasn’t their rocket that started the fire. He spent all night one night doing calculus formulas, which he didn’t know much about, until he figured it out. He quickly went to his friend, Quinton’s, house and showed him what he had figured out, and he went back to school, showed Mrs. Riley, and they were able to shoot rockets again.

Homer had many obstacles in the way of his dream of building rockets: His father, not knowing how to do the complicated formulas, and being accused of starting the forest fire. But he was determined enough to show everyone that he didn’t care what they thought, and that he could be something in this world, even if he was from the tiny town of Coalwood, West Virginia.