Analysis Of Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken

Louie Zamperini is the type of person that has been through a lot of pain and happiness, making Louie much more complex of a person than most people. Louie is a person who started off as mischievous and then turned that into power for running, and won a lot races breaking records. He went to join the Air Force for the army, and then one day his plane crashed into the ocean and only him and 2 others survived the crash. He was next the found by the Japanese and was sent to a POW camp, and was a victim of many war crimes. The book “Unbroken ” by Laura Hillenbrand, shows Louie’s two character traits that most defines Louie are tenacious and fractious.

Well-known nonfiction author Laura Hillenbrand, in her best-selling biography, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, describes the chilling reality faced by those living in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps. As the title suggests, this is not the typical World War II tale of hardship that ends in liberation; rather, it follows the main character, Louis “Louie” Zamperini, through his childhood, Olympic performances, and military career leading up to his captivity, as well as his later marriage and many years of healing. Hillenbrand's purpose is to impress upon her readers the scale of this tragedy as well as remind them of the horror that so many nameless soldiers endured. She adopts an emotional yet straightforward tone in order to get readers to sympathize with the characters and truly understand what they went through. To do so, she manages to make the unique story of one man represent the thousands of others going through the same tragedy.

Months passed with little action, however one day on a mission in search of a missing plane , Louie’s plane crashed in the middle of the Pacific due to engine failure. With little supplies, Louie ,Mak , and Phil survived 33 days , before sadly Mak passed away. On July 14 Louie and Phil were captured by the Japanese; thus turning them into P.O.W.S . Moving from prison to prison, Louie faced his biggest problem yet: The “Bird”. Despising Louie, “ the Bird” treated him like dirt.”Pick it up , the Bird said. With some effort, Louie hoisted it up, and the Bird ordered him to lift it higher and hold it directly over his head. Louie heaved the beam up” (301).This happened to occur after louie was assigned to watch and make sure a sickly goat would not die. With no food to give the goat, Louie shared his although he had minimal to share. This was his punishment for the goats death. After 37 mins, “ He felt his conscious slipping, his mind losing adhesion, until all though knew was a single thought; He can’t break me. Across, the bird had stopped laughing”(302). Holding up the beam was a hard to do, considering he was also getting hit by an officer at the same time. As Fearless as Amelia Earhart, Louie stood up against cruelty and injustice, even when it “threatened “ his life .4 and a half years of being a P.O.W, later Louie was freed from the

During a bomb raid Louie and his crewmates were in Super Man, their assigned plane when Japanese fighting planes called Zeros, were all around them and attacking them. “Louie had his aim, and the first bombs dropped, spun down, and struck their targets.” Even with the chaos of the zeros Louie was determined to make it out alive and finish the mission. Zeros managed to strike and gravely wound Super Man and some of Louie’s crewmates. Louie and the remaining crewmates were assigned to a new plane, Green Hornet and a new squadron which included six new men, which included Sergeant Francis McNamara who went by Mac.

Unbroken Essay Prompt #2 In the novel Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, after his plane crashed, Louie Zamperini was stranded on a raft for forty-seven days, then put in a war camp in which he was singled out and tortured by “The Bird”. Despite all the outer struggles that could have resulted from his situation, Louie paid the biggest price in resolving his inner struggles. Louie’s conflicts started before the war and lasted long after the war.

The American author Og Mandino once said,”sound character provides the power with which a person may ride the emergencies of life instead of being overwhelmed by them. Failure is… the highway to success.”In Laura Hillenbrand’s biography Unbroken, the considerable Louis Zamperini exemplified Og Mandion’s out look beating as a world war II soldier,took on anything handed to him from shark attacks to a prisoner of war in japan. It was Zamperini’s Determination that pushed each other to continue to survive in which Hillenbrand convyed his captivating biography.

When Louie was a young boy he was very mischievous and did a lot of bad things that he often got into trouble for. He would steal from families “If it was edible he stole it. He sulked down alleys, a role of lock picking wire in his pocket.” and get into fights with other kids (Hillenbrand 6). Until one day his older brother named Pete displayed the opportunity of becoming a track star for their school because he is always

Winston Churchill once said,”success consists of going from failure without loss of enthusiasm.”Louie Zamperini, an outstanding olympian and WWll hero, keeps enthusiasm throughout his struggles and that is possibly what saved him. Louie Zamperini is portrayed in the novel Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand, first as a young boy who smokes cigarettes, drinks, and takes his frustration out by fighting. In his twenties he goes to war, then returns a different man. Through his many years of suffering, it was hard but he became a better man for it.Louie Zamperini goes through a great deal of suffering in WWII which leads to him redeeming himself.

Unbroken by Laura Hilenbraud is the biography of Louis Zamperini, the book shows the limits to what a man will endure to survive against all odds to come home to his family. During World War two POW camps were used on both sides and at the time the vast Empire of Japan had signed the Geneva Conventions limiting the treatment of enemy combatants, many to all camps were subjected to inhumane conditions that the men who had to endure the atrocity’s fought every day to keep their dignity. Over the course of history, camps were used to hold enemy combatants who have surrendered.

The American olympian Gail Devers once said,”Sometimes we fall, sometimes we stumble, but we can’t stay down. We can’t allow life to beat us down. Everything happens for a reason, and it builds character in us, and it tells us what we are about and how strong we really are when we didn’t think we could be that strong.” In Laura Hillenbrand’s biography Unbroken, the determination Louis Zamperini possessed, personifies Gail Devers’ words when, Undoubtedly, Zamperini’s will to survive helped him reunite with his family after World War II, after he fought against the brutal and sadistic beatings he endured in Japanese POW camps.

The World War II has long passed, but it remains an endless source of inspiration for many works of art. In the category of books under the theme of World War II, “Unbroken” stands out as one of the most astonishing stories that have ever been told. This is the true story about Louie Zamperini’s life, from a troublesome kid to an Olympian, an American soldier to a POW survivor, and later, he became an inspirational Christian speaker.

Louie sent a telegram to his parents making sure they knew he was alive. Shortly after that, the war ended. This was a huge

In World War II, 30,000 POWs died (forces-war-records). Louie Zamperini was one of the lucky few that survived. All across Louie’s life he has had to keep many of the traits that he had acquired during his childhood and teenage years. Especially when he was captured by Japanese officers after being stranded at sea for 47 days. Using these traits he survived many POW camps with “The Bird”, one of the most brutal officers that Louie knew of. In Laura Hillenbrand’s book Unbroken, Louie Zamperini has gained many attributes, the two most prominent being that he’s optimistic, and that he’s courageous, and many of his actions throughout Unbroken seem prove so.

The time and setting are both two of the most important factors in this book. The setting is useful because it has Louie in his childhood in Torrance, college years at the University of Southern California, Olympic events in Germany during the Nazi era, army training in Hawaii and prisoner of war camp in Japan. Louie got to explore so many places at such a young age it was impossible to figure where he might’ve gone after the Olympics if he hadn’t been enlisted. If the readers didn’t know where Louie was in the book, the plot line wouldn’t make sense to most people. The time this book took place in is very significant as well. The book is set before, during and after World War 2. Louie’s account of the war was so shocking and thrilling to the public because no one had been quite sure about what had happened in previous war camps like Auschwitz, even though half of the book focuses on his life before and after his time in Japan. The people didn’t have the Internet then so they couldn’t look up recent updates on the war at the touch of a button. America was mostly in the dark when it came to Japan between the years of 1939 and 1945 so when Louie came forward to the public with his recollections of his time spent there, everyone was enraptured. There would not be much of a book if the war had never

“Unbroken” is one of the most motivating stories about the resilience of a young adult bound for the Olympics when he was interrupted by World War 2. This book is a page turner and keeps the action flying at you on every page. Louie Zamperini the main character is continuously face to face with many problems meant to either take his life or destroy his resilient mindset. Although, some consider the book unbroken to be long and boring, I think it is a exciting page turner that shows the struggles faced by this talented Olympic athlete stuck in a time of war.