Rocket Boys -- the Pain Term Paper

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Turner resented the boy's efforts, and accused the members of Homer's Rocket Club of starting a bomb club, much the same way Homer's father's friend Doc warned the boys that they would blow themselves to kingdom come. Mr. Turner only begins to look differently at what came to be known as the Rocket Club after the high school's football season was threatened, because of the school's poor academic record. Homer's instincts and his mother's wise words were correct -- Sputnik changed everything, and America's leaders agreed that America had to look to the future. Homer was a defiant boy of conventional wisdom, a rebel, but not because of the clothes he wore or because of his anger, but because of his determination to look beyond the confines of Coalwood and to use his mind.

Homer's efforts were encouraged by his teacher Miss Riley, a rebel in her own right. She was a female science teacher in a male-dominated field, an unheard of profession in a day when the mention of a woman working was often looked at strangely, or laughed at. Homer was inspired by Miss Riley as well, and he later admitted, had a schoolboy crush on the beautiful, young, unmarried teacher. Miss Riley taught Homer that "learning something, no matter how complex, wasn't hard when I had a reason to want to know it," in other words, that motivation means everything (143) Miss Riley also made a special request for the 'Rocket Book' that provides one of the keys to the boy's attempts to produce a realistic rocket, telling Homer: "All I've done is give you a book. You have to have the courage to learn what's inside it" (207).

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Homer's efforts slowly win him respect, not just from Miss Riley, but also from the girls of the school, like his beloved Dorothy and even from the 'bad girl' ("stacked like a brick) Valentine Carmina, who protects him from the pushes and shoves of the football players (110).Homer, like any boy, wants love and respect and to be popular with the opposite sex, but he finds an unusual way to gain esteem -- science.

With Miss Riley's encouragement, the Rocket Boys eventually make their way to the National Science Fair. The boys won acclaim for Coalwood at the fair, and eventually the town came to respect its new favored sons. Once, the football players were the only Coalwood heroes, even though they were often cruel to the rocket boys, and made them feel threatened. At the end, the town celebrates the Rocket Club's achievements. The Rocket Boys did not merely build a rocket, and realize their dream of emulating their favorite scientists. They also changed the culture of the town in which they lived, which is perhaps every young person's greatest dream. The older people were wrong and the boys were right, but the Rocket Boys changed the world, not through mindless rebellion and negation, but through mindful and positive pursuit of a great dream.

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