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Unbroken Book Report

Decent Essays

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 …show more content…

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

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