Courage is The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
Tom Wolfe's novel The Right Stuff, gives an accurate description into the lives of the first astronauts and rocket-powered aircraft test pilots, from their careers before, during, and after their selection to become astronauts, through to their private home lives. All throughout his book, Wolfe refers to "the right stuff" and "this righteous stuff" without ever saying upfront what "the stuff" really is. I have concluded that throughout the story, "the right stuff" is simply courage. I would personally define courage as: The willingness to put yourself in a potentially dangerous situation. It is never easy to put yourself into a dangerous position, this is because our brain is programmed for survival, but there are ways to better equip our brain so that these situations become less dangerous. A couple of these ways are with our natural instincts and good training.
When you have natural instincts for something, it makes that task easier than for someone who doesn't have the same instincts. There was a good part of Wolfe's book that described how instincts led to Gordon Cooper being selected into the Mercury Program. It was when he was doing the initial interview sessions when the "NASA psychologists were asking candidates about their family lives, Cooper was able to sense the correct answers and describe his family life as terrific, when in fact they were separated". Cooper's natural people person instincts helped him recognize what this line of questioning was about, kept him in the running for an astronaut position-which he later received-and was able to reconcile with his wife so they looked like the model family.
Throughout his book, Wolfe describes training that these men ...
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...flight".
So after reading stories of astronauts, their families, and test pilots, I take Tom Wolfe's phrase "The Right Stuff" to mean courage that was obtained from natural instinct and training. Without any of these special traits, I believe that finding a person to fly strapped onto a rocket into the heavens would have been a very difficult one for the military and NASA. They are the intangible items that make the difference between life and death when a person is placed in a dangerous situation.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Wolfe, Tom. The Right Stuff. New York, NY: Bantam Books, 2001.
Wolfe's novel describes the early years of the manned rocket flight era. He tells stories from legends like Chuck Yeager, Allen Shepard, Neil Armstrong, and Gordon Cooper. These stories tell about their histories from screenings to become astronauts to being record-setting test pilots.
Throughout the ages, men and women have been at the heart of myths and legends, evolving into tragic heroes in large part due to the embellishment bestowed upon them over the ages. From Odysseus and Achilles to Brutus, Hamlet, and King Lear, epic poems have revolved around the tragic hero. Pat Tillman was a man of many aptitudes and virtues, never satisfied by the mediocre, striving for more adventure, more meaning, in his tragically short time on Earth, and personifying the phrase carpe diem. Even Pat Tillman had tragic flaws; his unwillingness to be typical, his undying loyalty to family and country, and his curiously concrete set of morals amalgamated to set in motion Tillman’s eventual death. These, whatever the outcome might have been, are not by any means, the archetypical tragic flaws. They are, as Jon Krakauer later described, “tragic virtues.” Where Men Win Glory is not solely a tribute to Pat Tillman. What makes it truly unique is its exhaustively comprehensive history preceding Tillman’s death, and equally essential, the events that transpired following his death, including the cover-ups, scandals, corruption, falsified documents, indignities, and lies that facilitated, also, in emphasizing the core themes, of which Tillman was the epitome. Tillman’s fidelity and devotion to the people whom he loved, the use of misinformation and cants surrounding his death, and others’ responses to what Tillman considered paramount in his life all played a key role in the tragedy of a man who won glory.
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In The Crucible by Arthur Miller, both pride and excessive pride influence the characters throughout the play. Pride is a sense of one's dignity and worth. Excessive pride is being overly confident of one's own self worth. Throughout, pride influences the actions, reactions, and emotions of the characters in such ways to establish the outcome of the story. Three characters are impelled by their pride. Hale, who takes pride in his ability to detect witchcraft; Elizabeth Proctor, whose pride makes forgiving her husband difficult; Proctor, whose excessive pride causes him to overlook reality and the truth.
Marilyn Frye, a feminist philosopher, discusses the idea of oppression and how it conforms people into gender roles. She claims that it is based upon membership in a group which leads to shaping, pressing, and molding individuals, both women and men.
In Aldous Huxley's novel, "Brave New World" he introduces a character named, Bernard Marx an alpha part of the upper higher class who does not quite fit in. Bernard is cursed by the surrounding rumors of something going wrong during his conditioning that he becomes bitter and isolates himself from those around him in the World State. Huxley's character experiences both alienation and enrichment to being exiled from a society that heavily relies on technology and forms of entertainment with little to no morals.
“Without Conscience" by Robert D. Hare is one aimed towards making the general public aware of the many psychopaths that inhabit the world we live in. Throughout the book Hare exposes the reader to a number of short stories; all with an emphasis on a characteristic of psychopaths. Hare makes the claim that close monitoring of psychopathy are vital if we ever hope to gain a hold over Psychopathy- A disorder that affects not only the individual but also society itself. He also indicates one of the reasons for this book is order to correctly treat these individuals we have to be able to correctly identify who meets the criteria. His ultimate goal with the text is to alleviate some of the confusion in the increase in criminal activity by determining how my of this is a result of Psychopathy.
As might be expected from the title, The Right Stuff is centered on the concept of having the right stuff. Author Tom Wolfe uses several recurring techniques and comparisons to describe this idea and its relationship to the men who took part in the Mercury program.
Pride: we can take it in what we do, who we are, and what we’ve overcome. In Carl Sandburg’s “Chicago” he writes about the criticism and judgment that comes at his city, Chicago, and her laborers. The theme he portrays in his poem is that people can be proud no matter what they do, where they live, and what people think of him/her. He illustrates this theme through, word choice, imagery, and relational shifts throughout the poem.
Many soldiers of today know what courage is. Courage is doing what is needed to do, not what absolutely must be done. In Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried”, the soldiers were not what one would think of as courageous. The soldiers were courageous in the sense that their courage came from fear of dishonor. The soldiers did what must be done in order to keep their honorable reputation. True courage was not present until the end of the story.
The United States underwent a massive technological development during the 1940’s through the 1960’s. Yet, the most significant part of this technological development was the military aviation and the aerospace programs. Why was the US so interested in the creation of the aerospace program? What was the political and social motivations behind the space exploration? Who made the moon landing possible? Tom Wolfe gave in his book “The Right Stuff” a clear answers and explanation to these questions. Not only that Tom Wolf puts the life of American heroes on the spot light. He informed us about the exceptional skills and strengths of the heroes who made the impossible possible, the heroes who put their lives in the line to achieve exceptional
Rocketry, the use of rocket power as a propulsion mechanism, has changed the boundaries of man’s domain.Before the advent of efficient rocket power, space flight was seen as an impossibility and exclusively the subject of science fiction stories.The nature of rocket power changed in the early twentieth century when a man named Robert Hutchings Goddard focused his research and his entire life on efficient rocket propulsion.Rocket power had been thought of long before Goddard’s time, but he was the first to have success with it.
He constantly showed devotion to the crew members on the journey, he tries to motivate he crew with speeches to keep the men’s spirits high and to keep them motivated to move along with him. He was the definition of a true leader that would do nothing until he gets what he wanted all along. The dedication and devotion of his personal life he put into the journey is a true testament to his character.
...f the Baltimore Gun Club that decided to build a large enough gun that could launch a rocket to the moon, suggested by their president; Impey Barbicane. However, when an opponent of Barbicane betted that the project will fail, it motivated them to make it into a “manned” flight, which eventually turned it into an international race into space.
Topic: Analysis of war as a business in the play mother courage and her children