Although there are many conclusions that could be made on the literary work The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe, one in particular that is of great significance is the definition of the work. In this piece of Wolfe’s, “the right stuff” as it is referred to is what Wolfe believes is morally correct or prudent in terms of what our children and people of the world in general today should be seeing and learning. For instance, we see this in how he points out that “American children are now taught that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon in 1969. They also may remember that Michael Collins was the third astronaut circling the moon while they were on it. How much of the earlier space program information do they know?” (Wolfe, 2001: 29). In this regards he basically makes serious note of how although children are often taught the basics, they are not given a thorough enough background on certain major historical events, information that is really critical for them to be aware of. Wolfe did an incredible amount of research for this literary work, and in particular he learned that the mental attitude of the pilots that comprise the unspoken “right stuff” the attributes that create an extraordinary pilot able to fly an extraordinary air machine. Furthermore, “The Right Stuff chronicles the early American jet program from the late 1940s through the Mercury NASA program and the single manned space capsule”. (Jandy’s Books, 2003).
One of the most important parts of the book is in regards to how the story contrasts the “Mercury Seven”, which were: Scott Carpenter, Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard, and Deke Slayton, and their families with chuck Yeagar. Wolfe explains his intrigue of finding out why the astronauts accepted the danger of space flight by taking the mental and physical characteristics into consideration and this story is really more about the space race than space exploration, and throughout the entire work Wolfe is basically attempting to explain what the concept of “the right stuff” means. We can see more clearly what “the right stuff” is by how Wolfe describes the piloting of the world and how it is divided into “those who had it and those who did not. This quality, this it, was never named, however, nor was it talked about in any way”. (Wolfe, 2007: p.18). This quality of the right stuff is able to evade more description however, and according to Wolfe this is for a number of reasons, but specifically:
To take off in an F-100 at dawn and cut in the afterburner and hurtle twenty-five thousand feet up into the sky so suddenly that you felt not like a bird but like a trajectory,
yet with full control, full control of five tons of thrust, all of which flowed from your will and through your fingertips, with the huge engine right beneath you, so close that it was as if you were riding it bareback, until you leveled out and went supersonic, an event registered on earth by a tremendous cracking boom that shook windows, but up here only by the fact that you now felt utterly free of the earth – to describe it, even to wife, child, near ones and dear ones, seemed impossible. So the pilot kept it to himself, along with an even more indescribable…an even more sinfully inconfessable…feeling of superiority, appropriate to him and to his kind, lone bearers of the right stuff. (Wolfe, 1997: p.30).
It is therefore the conclusion of this review, after proper identification and understanding of the facts laid out, that “the right stuff” is incredibly difficult to explain in terms of the sensations that it is attempting to umbrella, however it is the heroes that are exposed in this right stuff that really matter, and which are displayed in the proper respect in this literary work of Wolfe’s.
Works Cited
- Jandy’s Books. “The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe”. 2003.
- Wolfe, Tom. The Right Stuff. New York: Bantam, 2001.
- Young, Victoria. “Write the Stuff: Authorship in Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff”. 2007.