The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe, Essay Example

“Wives seem to comprehend that their husbands may die through early sacrifice for the military and bring later rewards.”

Wolfe compares the career of an ambitious young fighter pilot to a ziggurat, an ancient Babylonian pyramid with its steps and terraces, with the chosen few, “the very Brotherhood of the Right Stuff itself,” at the top. Candidates begin to be “left behind” in military flight training from the start. Some are unable to cope with class work or with basic flight instruction. The real test for Navy pilots, though, is the aircraft carrier landing. An aircraft carrier deck is sixty feet above the water, has no rails, and pitches up or down five or ten feet with each wave, and is slick with hydraulic fluid and jet-fuel. Many pilots do well on their first landing, but after they have actually been on a carrier they depend to develop symptoms such as in the American classic Movie Top Gun starring Tom Cruise.

A test pilots words are never put into creed but they are the honor code of the pact, ‘the right stuff’ by which they live and abide by. The code comes from being taught the code from commandeers and having it instilled in a pilots life ‘

Becoming a pilot takes sacrifice and diligence and devotion to the US  a cutting-edge.

The real test for a pilot is when he is up there in the sky or has to make a landing on an air-craft carrier with pressure on.  That determines the [men from the boys].