October Sky Response Blog

Hey kids. Bigdog here with a movie review on the movie October Sky. Of course what would this be without educational fun facts and reasoning. To summarize this movie, it takes place in a town called Coalwood, West Virginia. Now, the main character Homer is trying to find his way in the world. His brother is a hotshot football player, his mom has a loving support group, and his Dad is the leader of the Coal workers, which is the main export in their town. Many people revere Homer's dad, and many people in Coalwood end up going into coal when they grow up. Many Coal mines back in that time frame had their own communities and own money. But, coal was a very important asset to the United States and to many people their lives revolved around it. Anyway, Homer doesn't have anything to himself. Then at the same moment in time, the Russians have launched Sputnik into outer space as the first successful satellite. And every, October it flies over the night sky where Homer lives. So, when Homer saw it he became mesmerized, and the next day wanted to build a rocket. So he and his friends tried to make one but failed numerous amounts of times. They then friended the "class nerd" Quentin and got help from the school science teacher that had faith in them to go to college with their experiment. Now, if you're wondering how they can go to college I will tell you. Every year even today, their is a national science fair held in Indianapolis, and the winners can get into any college they want. before I get to what happened their, I forgot to tell you that when they were starting to get good a shooting rockets, they were accused of starting a fire in a town called Welch from a rocket shooting. Now, for a long half-of-a-year they didn't do any rocket shooting, but then Homer breaks out a book her teacher gave her on rocket angles and trajectory. They then found out that it wasn't their rocket, but a flare from a plane. They then won the regional science fair and the national science fair. All boys the went to college and Homer got a job at N.A.S.A. Sadly, Homer's father died of black lung disease, not from smoking, but from being in the coal mines too long. The teacher also died of Hodgekins disease. As you can see, there were many science and math connections to this movie.
Lastly, I thought that I should connect this movie yo some of our character Ed traits. So, the boys showed much cooperation with each other when they had to keep building rockets, even if they failed. Homer showed much assertion when he sood up to his Dad when he told him he didn't want to be a coal miner. Many people throughout the town had much respect for Homer's father for being head coal miner. The boys showed much empathy for their teacher when she said she was diagnosed with Hodekins disease. Lastly, Homer showed much self-control when his rockets kept on failing and blowing up. As you can see, many character traits existed throughout the movie October Sky.