Review Of Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken

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.

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.

Even when the weight of the world is coming down and doubt is setting in, there still are powers to help carry on. Louie Zamperini, a famous Olympic athlete, was dragged down to a low level when he was captured by Japanese forces and suffered under horrendous conditions in the many POW camps he stayed at. Throughout all of life’s trials, he survived, due to his strong resilience and agency. He wanted to live, and even though he may have wanted to give up, he had plenty of things to live for. In Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand uses both internal and external conflict to show the theme that people can stand up against enemies even when the odds seem stacked up against them.

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand is a historical biography about the life of Louie Zamperini. Louie began as a delinquent and soon became a track star. Heading into the battlefield, Louie Zamperini became a bombardier. On a search-and-rescue mission, Louie’s B-24 crash landed into the ocean. He became a castaway with two other crew members. Louie was captured by the Japanese and sent to a POW camp. After two years, Louie was reunited with his family. During his childhood, Louie was troublesome turning into a resilient individual during the war, then developing into a forgiving person after the war.

What would you have done if you were stranded on a raft with two other men for 44 days with provisions to last less than 3 days? This is one of the easiest things Louie Zamperini had to endure in “Unbroken”, by Laura Hillenbrand. The most important thing to be learned from the life of Louis Zamperini is to never crack under pressure, because of his survival on a raft, how he withstood the cruelty of the bird, and how he survived through the torture of Japanese POW camps.

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.

Survival of the Resilient American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was quoted as saying, “When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on” (Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotes). In the book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand a boy named Louie Zamperini goes to the Olympics for the 5k. His life soon changes though when Japan attacks pearl harbor. Louie is drafted into the air corps. His plane goes down in the pacific and he is captured by the Japanese and becomes a POW.

Louie Zamperini was a young boy who lived in Torrance, California, living his early years with a troublesome attitude. His childhood was filled with hatred, anxiety, sorrow, but in the end, it all led to happiness. Louie was a young man competing as an olympic athlete, until he went off to war as a bombardier. As he and his crew members flew a B-24 over the Pacific ocean, his life had turned upside down. The character traits of optimism and resourcefulness that Louie demonstrates in Unbroken written by Laura Hillenbrand, helped him get through the hardest times in life.

According to the great retired olympian track athlete Gail Devers, “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 Unbroken, a biography written by Laura Hillenbrand, Louis Zamperini illustrates Devers’ words with his resilience, springing back after his World War II bomber crashed and enemy forces captured him. In the end Louis’ ability to make due with every hellish situation life threw at him that influenced Hillenbrand’s aspired survival story.

The American writer of Happiness for Beginners once wrote, “Bravery can only come from having something to be brave about.” Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand’s goes into depth showing Louis Zamperini's bravery, showing he kept his braveness even though his life on his 47 day drift at sea. This character trait is an amazing trait to have in his certain situation and life struggle. With his trait can help the others that he is with and keep their hope for survival. In his youth Louie committed to be a courageous type of mischief: “Louie climbed the steeple of a Baptist church, rigged the bell with piano wire, strung the wire to a nearby tree, and roused the police, the fire department, and all of Torrance”(7).

Louie Zamperini was one of many soldiers who suffered through tremendous amounts of mistreatment and only scant amounts of food during his time as a POW to the Japanese: “ For these men, nothing was ever going to be the same,” (354). Returning home, these terrible memories of his imprisonment stuck with him; provoking him to make decisions that would only cause harm to himself.: “‘It was like he got hit real hard and he was trying to shake it off,’” (346). Meeting someone who distracted him from his pain, he became infatuated with the woman, asking her hand in marriage after only two weeks of knowing one another. Nightmares of the Bird’s constant beatings lead Zamperini to drinking, the only thing that drove his mind completely from the painful

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

For my summer reading, I read Unbroken by Lauren Hillenbrand. The story is about Louis “Louie” Zamperini. Louis was a juvenile delinquent, Olympic runner, and an airman during World War II. In the beginning of the book, it explains Louie’s exploits as a child and his training as a runner. After going to the New York Olympic trials, he travels to Berlin to participate in the 1936 Olympics. During the Olympics, Louie ran the 5000m and then was able to meet personally with Adolf Hitler. Then he stole a Nazi flag from the Chancellery, and after being questioned by a German official, he was able to keep the banner. Another interesting part of the story was how Louie’s bomber, “Super Man” was able to survive being shot by Japanese anti aircraft

War offers many lessons on how to overcome adversity and one can learn valuable lessons from people like soldiers and especially prisoners of war. As a boy, Louie was a troublemaker destined to become a criminal, as he did many horrible acts when he was younger. At age fifteen, he turned his life around and began running; setting world records no one else could in the Olympics. When WWII broke out, he joined the Armed forces and everything went down from there and he was held captive. In Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, Louie made himself resist invisibility by being courageous and resourcefulness throughout his lifetime.