A Film About Homer Hickam: Themes in October Sky

UCSP

Who had more influence on Homer Hickam, his teacher or his mother? Explain.

Homer Hickam was mostly influenced by his teacher because she encouraged and supported him. Although his mother still showed her support for him, it was different with his teacher. Homer’s first ambition was to become a football player, so he could have a scholarship but after witnessing the launching of the Sputnik 1, he started having interest on it. His teacher, Ms. Riley introduced to him the science fair because of the fascination that he had.

Even though he was not goon in math and English, it didn`t stop him and with the help of his teacher who provided him with the things that he needs, assistance and guidance he was able to accomplish and achieve his dreams.

Cite one situation where progressivism was demonstrated in the film.

The word progressivism can be directly related with the word, `progress’. The scene where progressivism was exemplified, was when Homer Hickam and his friends started to build a rocket.

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They had several attempts first before coming up with the right combinations and formula on how to build a rocket. Every time the rocket failed, they did not give up and worked on how to make the rocket work. Later on, the progress that they have made did not only exceed their expectations, but it also made the people happy.

Cite two situations where pragmatism was demonstrated in the film.

In simple words, Pragmatism means to discover and to experiment because you are trying to create something through practical application and applying theories and beliefs.

Pragmatism was shown when they tried to locate one of their missing rockets which was assumed to be a cause of fire. They did not assume or have a wild guess rather, they applied mathematical equations and scientific theories to be able to find the rocket.

Another scene that depicts pragmatism was when they were trying to figure out what is wrong with the rocket because it doesn’t launch properly. Duly by applying scientific analysis, they found out that it was because of the combustion heat which caused their rockets to explode. To fix the problem they considered scientific methods to be able to come up with a better solution.

Homer Hickam declared, "I'm out for the mines that is your life, I'm going to space" What is the implication of such statement?

The statement of Homer Hickam is trying to say that, we must not let other people set our limits because it is our life and we must be the one to decide what we want to do. This also means that we should not let our upbringings influence us in what we want to become, we must not settle for less and we must dream big. We should not let our community become our hindrance for growth and discovery. If we want to dream, we must dream, and we must believe in ourselves despite of the obstacles that we may face.

Cite one and explain occurrence of transformation of change.

Change means requires becoming familiar with the current situation and working to make things better and Transformation is an assertion that our actions today create our future tomorrow. In the movie we can see how Homer and his friends changed overtime because of the different situations they have encountered in building a rocket. We can fully see the transformation when they have finished making their rocket because it assured that their future will not be the same on how they used to imagine it.

We can also see it on their product which is the rocket, we can see the process on how they made it and all the trials-and-error that they have been through, which can be considered as the change overtime but after figuring things out their rocket started to transform into something better. It turned into something that they did not expect.