The Wright Brothers- February 24 RR

READER RESPONSE

By: Karim February, 15 2011

I will be responding to The Wright Brothers, it is a biography, and I did my presentation on it. I’ve read 112/112 pages, and it is a great read for someone interested in aviation and how it began. It is by Susan E. Hamen.

INTRODUCTION: Well first of all, this is a biography, so there is no antagonist. The main character’s are well, the Wright brothers, Wilbur and Orville Wright. The setting starts out in Indiana, around late 1800 and early 1900 which was where the Wrights lived for a couple of years before moving to Dayton Ohio. There is no conflict, its all about the life of the Wright brothers and the invention of the aerial age. 

Milton Wright was their father and was an instructor at a college, and soon became a bishop. Their mother, Susan Wright was studying literature but after marrying Milton, she decided to remain home bound to take care of the five children; Reuchlin, and Lorin were the oldest. Born on April 16, 1867, came Wilbur, years later Orville would be born, and the youngest and only, Katharine who was also the only girl. In 1871 the Wright settled in a two story home in Dayton Ohio, Orville was later on born in that house. Anyways this is only the introduction so I’ll explain more in the next couple of paragraphs.

RELATE: This book reminded me of only one thing: when I was little, I remember that my dad came into my room while I was playing around, he asked me “ Do you know who invented the first ever gasoline powered car?”

“No.” I answered. Then he asked if I knew who invented the first airplane. I had no clue. He told me it was the Wright brothers. That’s when I kind of got interested in aviation. To this day, I remember the first time I heard their name, and the day I got hooked to airplanes. If I was able to talk to someone in the book, it would be Otto Lilienthal.

For those of you that have no idea who this man is, he was a German engineer who died while testing gliders of his own when Orville and Wilbur were young. He made 2000 brief flights which carried him more than 305m. I were able to talk to him, I would ask him what gave him the idea of human flight, and what inspired him, because he was one of the very first people to think have even thought about flying. He was a big inspiration to the brothers, he died trying to achieve his, as well as many others dream of flight. What I found interesting and admire about both Orville and Wilbur, is that they had very different thought from everyone who attempted or experimented flight before them. For example, in my biography, I explained that nobody ever thought about how a flying machine would be controlled in the air. People only thought about getting it in the air. When the brothers solved the problem of the ability to take off, they focused their attention to the key of flight: CONTROL. Wilbur always said that birds would lead to human flight, he would often just stare and experiment how birds fly. This would eventually lead to the greatest invention in history.

RETELL:

This is the first time I’ve done a reader response based on a biography so its different. Instead of a conflict, antagonist and other characteristics of a fiction book, it talks about famous peoples lives and how people who never gave up, always achieved their dream, maybe even changing the course of history.

In this biography, there were many cliff hangars, and places where the book asked the reader question or made them stop and think what would happen next. For example, on of the first couple of pages, when the introduction was going on, it stated; Would today be the day that their years of experiments and perseverance pay off? That part was a bit of both, it asked the reader a question as well as it was a cliff hangar. The reader had to infer based on their knowledge of why the two are so famous if they were successful or not. Because of their years of experimenting, perseverance, motivation and working together solving complex problems, these two were able to solve a problem no one else could ever do. It just shows where you can end up if you try very hard.

REFLECT:

Once again this book didn’t state the moral but it was easy to make one up. I figured one important one could be that all you have to do is try very hard and have hope for something you want to achieve. Eventually you will accomplish it. In this case, Wilbur and Orville were well encouraged by many people and their parents, they worked hard and cooperated with each other and got what they wanted, which was the invention of the first ever flying machine that could carry people. I would recommend this biography to others, it had all the dates in time order and explained in lots of details, it made a long story short. It even had many quotes and incredible images of their shops as I explained in my biography presentation. One quote was from Milton Wright, their father; “They were pretty good children, but mischievous, I had a little trouble with them.” This book had lots of sensory language. It explained very well what everything looked like, for example when they stayed at Kitty Hawk, t was like a desert with very high winds and lots of sand storms. That is just one of the many examples of adding voice in this text. So you tell me, were the brothers successful in the invention of human flight?