Throughout his memoir, Rocket Boys, Homer Hickam shares the story of his life. From his difficult start as a child in a slowly dying coal town to his successes in high school with amateur rocketry and academics, this story depends heavily on the circumstances surrounding it. The United States’ loss of the first part of the space race and the economic instability of this time period drove Sonny to achieve like he never would have otherwise. Even more specifically, without his father’s access to resources, the push from his mother or the hope that the landmark launching of Sputnik inspired in him, Sonny Hickam would not have gone on to build the rockets that gave him and his friends brighter futures. Before Sputnik and the rockets he would …show more content…
Before even the real narrative begins in the book, Homer gives us a brief introduction; he talks about how much Sputnik affected him and gives background for the rest of the story. One particular part illuminates very well just how much Sputnik affected him. “…there were two distinct phases in my life in West Virginia: everything that happened before October 5, 1957 and everything that happened afterwards…” (Rocket Boys 16). To Homer, Sputnik was such an important event the he uses it to divide his life into two sections, and he doesn’t cover much before it because he had no real big goals before Sputnik. Besides just Sputnik, Homer’s mother was also pushing him to be prepared. “You can’t count on the mine being here when you graduate from high school, Sonny. You can’t even count on this town being here” (Rocket Boys 44). In that section of the text, Sonny’s mother makes it obvious how she worries about him and his future. With the economic turmoil of that time period, it was very likely that the town and the mine wouldn’t be there for Homer after high school, even though none of the people running the mine would probably ever admit