Homer Hickam
I attended a speech on Monday, October 11th at 7:00pm. The speaker was Homer
Hickam, a West Virginia native and author of the Rocket Boys. The audience consisted of people
in different age groups and backgrounds. It was also a large, voluntary audience, so most people
seemed to enjoy the speech. Homer Hickam mostly talked about his book Rocket Boys from
which the movie October Sky was taken. He also explained how he came to write the book and
how West Virginia made an impact on his life.
Before hearing the speech, I had read Rocket Boys so I was very familiar with the events
he had mentioned in his presentation. Hickam had the necessary qualifications to present the
speech because it was his book and he knew all the facts. My initial impression of the speaker was
a positive one. I enjoyed his book and I respected him as a person as well as a speaker. Homer
Hickam also had great ethos because he focused on how West Virginia helped him to survive as a
writer as well as an individual. This pleased the audience very much because most of them are
residents in West Virginia.
The speaker did gain attention effectively. His presence captivated the audience when he
walked into the auditorium. Everyone just became silent and listened. Hickam really did not state
a thesis. He just greeted the audience and began reflecting on his life. Hickam did, however, make
an attempt to dispose the audience favorably toward the speaker and topic. He stressed the fact
that he was from West Virginia and how his book had been developed into a movie. The speaker
did not clearly preview the main points in the introduction. As I mentioned before, he just began
telling stories about his life without really setting up a structure for the audience to follow.
The main points of the speech were as follows: his childhood in West Virginia, how he got
the idea for his book, how his book became a movie and finally, how he became a NASA
engineer. The speaker used chronological order as his organizational pattern. He talked about his
childhood in West Virginia first, then he preceded to tell about the rest of his life. Hickam used
examples and testimonies of the other "Rocket Boys" who were present at the speech. This was a
very effective technique because the audience responded to it. The support was relevant and
adequate. Hickam did use good transitions between his main points. The speech did expand my
knowledge on the topic because Homer Hickam shared more intimate facts about his life and how
Audience (Who was the audience for this work? What evidence from the author’s writing leads you to this conclusion?)
The very first sentence goes right into the speech with no holding back and it lays out the thesis tha...
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discusses his life as a kid, and how he was accidentally placed in a vocational program in his
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a clever way so he was able to express his ideas fully. One way was