Space Race in Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff

Abstract

This paper is focused on the Space Race in Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff. The first chapter provides a summary of historical background and defines the terms the Cold War and the Space Race. The theoretical part also provides information about Tom Wolfe's life, his place in literature, and the origin and characteristic of the New Journalism, and also clarifies Wolfe's interest in the Space Race. The main part of this paper is the analysis of the book The Right Stuff. It covers the plot, themes, as well as the characters of the book. It analyses the book and devices of the New Journalism used in it. The last chapter of the analytical part of this thesis covers theory of adaptation and applies it to Phillip Kaufmann's movie adaptation of Wolfe's book. This part analyses the movie and compares it to the book as well as to the real historical events.