The growing up years of a person’s life are often a very difficult experience. Young people rarely realize that hard work and soul-searching are necessary for a person to truly mature. In the case of Sonny in Homer Hickam’s October Sky, it required several, some near-tragic, experiences for him to experience the mindset that eventually allowed him to grow as a person. In particular, Sonny learned about how to deal with death, what marriage is really about, and about what he needed to change about himself in order to mature. Sonny’s experiences with death forced him to change and grow up. One good example is when Ike died, sonny blamed it on himself. If sonny hadn’t asked ike to weld on his rocket then he would have never been in trouble and had to go into the mine. Unfortunately when the mine blew up ike was in a unsafe place and was killed. The next major experience sonny has with death occurs when somebody runs down his cat in the street and kills her . Sonny suffered when daisy may died almost as much as he did when ike died ,but was able to hold up in a more mature way and hold a proper funeral for her.…show more content… Even though they loved each other they had a lot of problems and fought all the time. Homer loved the mine almost more than he loved his wife which caused a lot of problems in his marriage. Any time the black phone rang at home he immediately left to tend to the mine. Homer looked at the mine as his life which was a problem causer in his marriage because he spent more time at the mine then with his family or at home. On the other hand, Elsie hated the mine and everything the mine stood for. She viewed the mine as a death trap where lives were destroyed and families were
