Unbroken Critique
Parker Topham
Mountain View High School
I. Identification of Work
Hillenbrand, L. (2010). Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. New York City, New York: Random House.
II. Summary of the Main Ideas In 2010, Laura Hillenbrand published, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. Her goal in writing this book was to share the World War II story of Louie Zamperini and to inspire those who read it to be determined and resilient. When he was a boy, Louie was a trouble maker and was always getting into trouble. His brother Pete convinced him to join the track team and he, with lots of work, ended up being good enough to qualify for the Olympics. After running in
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One of the men died, but because of his determination Louie, and the other man, Phil, ended up surviving and they drifted for 47 days before they were captured by the Japanese. They were taken to Japan where they spent the rest of the war enduring the cruelties of the Japanese POW camps. Louie survived all of the hardships throughout the war because of his resilience and will to survive. After the war, Louie could not forgive his captors who treated him so terribly and his life started to fall apart. He eventually was redeemed from the horrors of his past, and forgave them causing his life got immensely better. He lived to the age of …show more content…
One example of her good details was in part V when she talked about what happened to most of the POWs after the war. She said, “A 1954 study found that in the first two postwar years, former Pacific POWs died at almost four times the expected rate for men of their age…” (p. 354). This quote shows that Hillenbrand payed attention to detail and made sure to include facts to support her ideas. However, Hillenbrand sometimes included too many facts and information so it started to distract from the story. One example is when Louie first meets the Bird at camp Omori, but then Hillenbrand started to talk about one time that the Bird went to beat another prisoner when she should have been talking about how the Bird was treating Louie because it is his story. There were only a couple of times that happened though and for the most part the facts and extra information did not detract from the story at all. Although Hillenbrand sometimes may have added too much information, the rest of the time, the facts and other stories enhanced the story and helped to set the tone. Hillenbrand’s idea of focusing on resilience and all of her details and facts all helped to convey the message of Louie’s experience and to readers and in made the story more valid and intriguing because of some of the odds that
In the novel Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand a passionate young man named Louie Zamperini has his life turned around by putting his efforts into track where he becomes an Olympic level athlete, but as WW2 breaks out he then enlists in the military later leaving, but only to be drafted again. After crash landing he ends up being captured by the japanese where he is tortured, and picked on by the prison commander but stays “Unbroken”. Louie is affected greatly from different cultures and ethnicities, as in this time period WW2 broke out, people who were rich were relatively untouched by the draft. WW2 in itself was the biggest clash of ethnicities, cultures, and started over anger towards other cultures.
In this astonishing World War II non-fiction novel based on a persons’ life named Louis Zamperini, there are many rhetorical strategies used to explain the many hardships of his life. The name of the novel is Unbroken. The non-fiction novel written by Laura Hillenbrand in 2010 took over 7 years to complete. The book was number two on New York Times best seller for nearly four years. Laura Hillenbrand went into extraordinary detail when creating this piece, explaining the unfortunate yet amazing life of Louis Zamperini.
SUMMARY-In the novel Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, Louie Zamperini fights as a bombardier in World War II. Louie ends up crashing one of his planes and is forced to face the brutal struggles of the ocean. Finding land after 47 days of being stranded, Louie becomes a prisoner of war to the Japanese. He is beaten, starved, and worked to near death where he learns how to survive anything that is thrown at him. He becomes resilient which is what led him to survive.
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.
Louies hardships after crashing the Green Hornet cause him to suffer as a POW while his odds continues to be against him. After crashing the Green Hornet that
Phil and Zamperini suffered through many camps, with many harsh and brutal guards. Amazingly, America won the war and they were saved. Unfortunately, Louie was not the same. He had post-traumatic stress disorder and was obsessed with finding and killing the Bird. After that, he went through some tough times until he was reintroduced to God and religion. He began to find himself and started living a happier life.
Hillenbrand, L. (2010). Unbroken: A World War II story of survival, resilience, and redemption. New York: Random House.
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.
The French emperor and arguably one of the best military tacticians Napoleon Bonaparte once said, ‘’Great ambition is the passion of a great character. Those endowed with it may perform very good or very bad acts. All depends on the principles which direct them.’’ In the book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, Louie goes through trouble and fame as his life progresses from being a small town boy to a famous athlete and competing in the Olympics. Later, Louie joins the military when the Axis powers Germany and Japan declared war on the United States. This results in Louie’s Bomber crashing and him being both stranded in the Pacific Ocean and captured by the Japanese, where he must endure torture as a POW. Miraculously, Louie survives in these camps
Unbroken by Lauren Hillenbrand tells the story of a boy named Louis Zamperini. Who in spite of great challenges, manages to rise to the occasion during a time of war. My late grandfather, Robert J. Randle fought in that very same war. Although he is not able to tell me himself what the war was like and what he had done, I was able to find evidence of his most prestigious accomplishments. Much like Louis, Robert was unmoving in the face of adversity.
Unbroken: The many faces of Louie Zamperini A man faces hunger, dehydration, diseases, and worst of all the loss of his family. In the novel, Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, Louie Zamperini faces monstrous situations as he tries to survive in inhumane conditions during Word War II. During his adventure, he displays many traits that shape the path of the story.
“He gave up drinking and smoking.” Louie did exactly this, because he knew the potential he had in running, and wanted to reach that potential. Louie is the main character in the book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. Almost the whole story revolves around him, and his magnificent life. Louie has grown from being a very troubled young boy, to being a very mature, giving, and humble young man.
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.
Louis' dramatic life story (Olympian and World War II POW) has been told in varous books and in the December 2014 film "Unbroken"