Essay On Unbroken

Resilience means the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness. It is being able to come back from a terrible situation in good spirits. In the book Unbroken, the theme of resilience is used many times. It is used most all throughout Louie’s time at the POW camps. Laura Hillenbrand has developed the theme of resilience through describing how Louie and the other POWs survived at the POW camps, which included his speaking out against the actions and trying to prove the Bird wrong, and also showed what the Japanese were going through during this time.

Chapters 1–5 introduce an average boy who would become a remarkable man. Born in 1917, Louie Zamperini was the child of Italian immigrants. Growing up in Torrance amidst poverty and anti-Italian bias, Louie got in the habit of running outside the law. He started smoking when he was 5 years old and drinking when he was 8. He stole anything he wanted—mostly food, money, and whatever else he could find. He ran small scams and vandalized property. Pete, Louie’s older brother, became concerned.

The art of survival is something that is not easily learned. For some, however, it is something that comes from a natural desire to be defiant and rebellious. In the novel Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand, protagonist Louie Zamperini fights for survival through a number of trials that are presented to him. His life takes him from being a troubled child, to an Olympic runner, to a bomber lost at sea, to POW in some of the worst camps Japan could conjure. Louie not only survives these trials, he stands up and goes directly against the normality and ease of submission and faces his adversity head on. Throughout the novel, Louie shows that his ability to survive stems from his natural urge to rebel and defy anything that he deems too controlling in his life.

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

In the beginning of Hillenbrand’s story of Louie Zamperini, Louie’s courage and bravery would become immediately obvious. His sister Sylvia said, “‘You could beat him to death, and he wouldn’t say ‘ouch’ or cry’”(9) . In spite of Louie’s strong character and bravery in his

In the book The Outsiders by S.E Hinton, it's built around the class division between the Socs and the greasers. The kids in the Socs came from privileged and wealthy families while the greaser grew up in a unstable and poor environment, and it shaped who they are and how they act. The novel deals with issues important to urban teens, and the obstacles that are part of their daily lives, showing realism in Hinton's writing. In the article ¨The Urban Experience in Recent Young Adult Novels¨ by Sandra Hassell and Sandy Guild, it discuss the importance of urban teens worlds represented in literature. The article consists of many characteristics that are established in urban youth books such as, the usage of slang, strong sense of community,

The Outsiders Essay – Describe an interesting theme from a text you have studied. Explain why this theme is interesting.

W.E.B. DuBois’ “Returning Soldiers,” an editorial piece written in May of 1919 for the NAACP’s publication The Crisis lays out for not just returning soldiers, but for African-Americans as a whole that the war is not over. While the Great War of 1914-1918 may have ended, there is still a greater war to continue to fight on the American homefront. “Returning Soldiers” calls out the United States government on the charges against its people as seen by DuBois and reiterates and rejuvenates the reader for the fight it still needs to take on. The black man soldier may have escaped the battlefields of France and now be able to shed the uniform that symbolizes the systematic injustices he faced, but upon returning, in his “civil garb” he is still a soldier, only in a different military.

The Story of Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand tells the story of Louis “Louie” Zamperini and the many challenges he faced throughout his life and his will to survive. Unbroken was an incredible and inspirational read. The main theme of Unbroken is when faced with challenges the human need to survive and the resilience that is needed to survive is powerful. There are many examples of the theme in Louie’s story which Hillenbrand broke down into five different periods of Louie’s life.

World War II had a lasting impression on not only the countries but on the soldiers and people as well. POWs and internees had to experience things that would make a grown man cringe in fear. In the stories ”Unbroken” by Laura Hillenbrand, and “Manzanar” by Jenne Houston Wakatsuki, tells the tragic story of how these men are stripped away of their human rights. As they try to struggle their way out of insanity, their stories will forever echo in history to show the outcome of war.

During the second World War, an olympic record holder, Louie Zamperini, was one of the few men that got shot down into the ocean and was stranded for 47 days on a lonely, little raft. The great American hero we all have heard of didn’t start out like you would have thought. He was a young scoundrel who was influenced by his brother to run for something better than away from is problems. After years of running and going to the German Olympics to set the best lap run in the 5,000 meters, Louie had gone into the Air Force and had gotten into trouble at a Japanese POW camp after a crash. The book Unbroken, written by Laura Hillenbrand, expresses Louie’s life exceptionally well, especially

Laura Hillenbrand’s biography titled Unbroken recounts the life of Louie Zamperini and major events that occurred throughout it. Hillenbrand’s purpose was to emphasize the inspirational story of heroic Zamperini as he qualified and participated in the Olympics, as well as describe the endless struggle of pain in the plane crash and in the Japanese POW camps. She also portrays the importance of dignity and resilience and how without it, the chances of surviving the cruel events Louie experienced during World War II would have been minimal.

In “Prisoner Number 600001”, Tessa Morris-Suzuki argues that Matsushita Kazutoshi, a Japanese soldier who fought in the Japanese, Chinese, and Korean wars, shows the harsh truth of the treatment of prisoners of war by the forces of the United Nations. After abandoning his country, Kazutoshi became a prisoner of war to both China and Korea. Most people don’t think about all of the things that prisoners of war had to go through and how the things that they had to do would scar them for life. They were forced to fight in wars that they had nothing to do with and fulfill any other needs that they had. Suzuki shows Kazutoshi’s life journey through his time as a POW, which also sheds a light on how deeply involved each country was involved in its neighbors’ business during the wars.

The African Americans had to endure this pain daily, and then had to pull out their strength from within to continue forward. In the poem “We Wear Mask” the author Paul Dunbar wrote “With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,” here it can be seen that misery is felt, but a happy face they keep to ensure the emotions remain