The Right Stuff - What is the stuff? As you might expect from the title, The Right Stuff is all about the concept of having the right stuff. Author Tom Wolfe uses several recurring techniques and comparisons to describe this idea and its relationship to the men who took part in the Mercury program. An opening chapter of the book is dedicated to the "right things" to explain the concept to the reader. . In this chapter, Wolfe makes a clear distinction between the right things and simple courage. He tells the reader that those who have the right stuff can't just risk their lives. He "should have the ability to climb into a hurtling machine and put his skin on the line and then have the grit, the reflexes, the experience, the coolness, to pull him back in the last yawning moment" (19) . One critic interprets the distinction as "between actually experiencing the right stuff—being a fighter pilot and experiencing, say, night landings on an aircraft carrier—and any previous attempt to describe that experience in language" (Marowski and Matuz 419 ). In the same chapter the reader is also introduced to an element that recurs throughout the rest of the book. The author compares a flying career to climbing a ziggurat, an extraordinarily tall and steep pyramid. In one particularly vivid passage he writes: “the idea was to demonstrate to each foot of the pyramid that you were one of the chosen and anointed who had what it took and could move higher and higher and eventually… .be able to join to the same Brotherhood of the Right Stuff" (19). Through this pyramid the world is divided between those who had things and those who were left behind. Another feature of the right things is the relationship between the drivers. These pilots always seem to want to associate only with each other. Wolfe shows the reader the pilots' belief that only other pilots can understand their daily lives and their struggles with death. In their discussions, however, it emerges that pilots never like to use words like "danger", "courage" and "fear". Instead they use special code or explain with example.