Guest Post by Jessica Prescott, INFJ

October Sky

Extroverted Sensing (Se): Roy Lee is pretty much the epitome of a Se-dom: self-confident, carefree, active, adventurous, down-to-earth. He lives in the moment, without worrying much about either the past or the future, and is concerned above all with simply having a good time: “Let ‘em have outer space. We got rock n’ roll.” At times, Roy Lee finds Homer’s Ne-dom insistence on the million exciting possibilities of the future to be bewildering and even frustrating, since it seems so disconnected from reality: “Got bad news for you, Homer. We ARE hillbillies.” Of the four Rocket Boys, Roy Lee is definitely the most apt to notice attractive girls and, in fact, considers himself something of a ladies’ man. In general, he’s highly aware of his environment—far more so than his friend Homer is—and occasionally exploits this advantage to play pranks on him.  

Introverted Thinking (Ti): Even though he can come across as purely carefree and irresponsible, Roy Lee is in some ways the most logical and sensible of the Rocket Boys, and he often acts as an unlikely “voice of reason,” pointing out flaws in their plans that the others fail to notice: “Hey, shouldn’t we get behind something . . .?” He seems to rely much more on his own internal sense of what’s logical than on any system of external proof. For instance, when O’Dell claims to have evidence that the railroad line is abandoned, Roy Lee is still highly skeptical, because it just doesn’t sound right to him . . . and his suspicions turn out to be justified.

Extroverted Feeling (Fe): Roy Lee never really struggles with outwardly expressing his feelings—it comes naturally to him. Whether he’s happy, angry, annoyed, or just bored, you’ll hear about it. He’s not ashamed to cry in front of others, either—as we see in the scene with Homer’s dad just after Roy Lee suffers a beating from his abusive stepfather. Even though Roy Lee has such a spontaneous, adventurous personality, he isn’t a “free spirit” in the Fi sense of the term; on the contrary, he places quite a bit of emphasis on conventional social rules and expectations: “You can’t be seen with him, Homer! He’s a weirdo!” To Roy Lee, what others think of him definitely matters, and he’s initially very reluctant to “go against the grain” the way Homer (Fi-auxiliary) wants to.

Introverted Intuition (Ni): Roy Lee doesn’t have much imagination, but he has enough to (eventually) allow Homer to convince him to that the four of them CAN build a rocket that will actually fly. Once he gets on board with the project, Roy Lee is excited about the possibility of winning a college scholarship and exploring life beyond Coalwood. He’s not too bad at predicting the logical outcome of future events, either: “Yeah, and what are we gonna tell the railroad when they catch us pryin’ up the track?”