Character Analysis
(Avoiding Spoilers)
Overview... a record-breaking test pilot. The former World War II hero now lives and works on an Air Force base in California where he regularly flies planes on dangerous test runs. When he becomes the first pilot to break the sound barrier, Yeager kicks off an era of innovation in aeronautics and space travel. But without a college degree, he may not be able to participate in the 1960s space race he helped launch.
Personality... brave, adventurous, impulsive, and rugged. Moreso than anyone, Yeager has “the right stuff” to be a pilot. He may not be the most disciplined or even the most professional, but his fearlessness pushes him to great heights (quite literally). Though he’s a war veteran, Yeager feels more like a free-spirited cowboy than a military man.
Get to Know him in...
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Tom Wolfe's book on the history of the U.S. Space program reads like a novel, and the film has that same fictional quality. It covers the breaking of the sound barrier by Chuck Yeager to the Mercury 7 astronauts, showing that no one had a clue how to run a space program or how to select people to be in it. Thrilling, funny, charming and electrifying all at once.
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From "America's nerviest journalist" (Newsweek)--a breath-taking epic, a magnificent adventure story, and an investigation into the true heroism and courage of the first Americans to conquer space. "Tom Wolfe at his very best" (The New York Times Book Review) Millions of words have poured forth about man's trip to the moon, but until now few people have had a sense of the most engrossing side of the adventure; namely, what went on in the minds of the astronauts themselves - in space, on the moon, and even during certain odysseys on earth. It is this, the inner life of the astronauts, that Tom Wolfe describes with his almost uncanny empathetic powers, that made The Right Stuff a classic.
