Unbroken Essay- Topic 1 “If I knew about the things I was going to endure before I was captured, I would kill myself.” (Louie Zamperini). The biography Unbroken was written by Laura Hillenbrand was told about the famous Olympic athlete and World War Two POW Louie Zamperini. Louie was held in a number of POW camps across the Pacific and witnessed the true horrors of the Japanese guards who enforced the inhumane standards throughout these camps. Louie shared his experiences about the endeavor and became an icon back in the United States, but was still unraveled from his time in the camps and his captors. POW camps were the areas of holding prisoners who had been captured and the POWs were supposed to be protected by the Geneva Convention about quality of life and labor, but the Japanese thought otherwise of the quality of life POWs should have while apprehended. …show more content…
Prisoners were often beaten for not being able to comprehend the orders given to them by the guards. One guard by the name of Mutsuhiro Watanabe (The Bird) was a terror throughout the camps of Ofuna and Omori. The Bird written by a POW held with Louie wrote “He was the most sadistic man I’d ever met.” (pg. ) The camps were full of decent guards who cared for the wellbeing of the men they were looking over. These guards would often give men help after harsh punishments, distract guards from attack prisoners, and turning the other way was as POWs stole and moved around the camp suspiciously. These guards were often ridiculed and treated harshly by their fellow guards for having a softer side for the POWs and this often led to savage beatings from fellow
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.
World War Two was a rough time for the US. Along with Louie Zamperini and Miné Okubo. The novel Unbroken written by Laura Hillenbrand, is based on the time period of WWII. WWII was between Japan and America. Zamperini was an Olympian who went into the air forces, once war broke out. In the article The Life Of Miné Okubo, Okubo was a Japanese-American who grew up in America and was put into a camp once Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Both Louie Zamperini and Miné Okubo struggled to get by during the war, but they managed. Zamperini and Okubo resist invisibility, and dehumanization the camps try to put them through, and have resistance against World War Two, as they fight for their lives.
From 1937 to the end of world war 2 (WWII), Japan killed over 3,000,000 Prisoners of war(POWs). Some POWs including Louie Zamperini had escaped death from these camps. Back in America, Japanese-Americans, like Jeanne Wakatsuki had to face racial discrimination in the Japanese internment camps. This all happened because on December 7, 1941 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Louie Zamperini from Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, is an Olympic running who joined the Air Force after WWII broke out. Jeanne Wakatsuki from Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, is a Japanese-American that lives in America during WWII. Louie Zamperini and Jeanne Wakatsuki’s experiences from being a POW are very similar yet different in their involvement throughout the war, their resilience during the war, and their struggles after the war.
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.
Louie Zamperini: Olympian, War Hero, Role Model Author, Laura Hillenbrand, in the biography Unbroken, narrates Louie Zamperini’s thrilling journey through World War II. Hillenbrand’s storyline goes into heart wrenching detail of the excruciating experiences Zamperini endured. Throughout, and particularly, when Louie’s war plane Green Hornet crashes, the author portrays the ideals of never giving up and self-determination through diction, imagery, and pathos. Throughout Unbroken, Hillenbrand continuously uses a variety of diction to keep the readers attached. Specifically, when Louie’s plane has engine failure and plunges into the Pacific, the author uses very tense and powerful word choice in order to show uncertainty and to create suspense.
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
War can be loud and visible or quiet and remote. It affects the individual and entire societies, the soldiers, and the civilians. Both U.S. prisoners of war in Japan and Japanese-Americans citizens in the Unites States during WWII undergo efforts to make them “invisible.” Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken hero, Louie Zamperini, like so many other POW’s, is imprisoned, beaten, and denied basic human rights in POW camps throughout Japan. Miné
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.
War can be loud and visible or quiet and remote. It affects the individual and entire societies, the soldier, and the civilian. Both U.S. prisoners of war in Japan and Japanese-American citizens in the United States during WWII undergo efforts to make them “invisible.” Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken hero, Louie Zamperini, like so many other POWs, is imprisoned, beaten, and denied basic human rights in POW camps throughout Japan. Miné Okubo, a U.S. citizen by birth, is removed from society and interned in a “protective custody” camp for Japanese-American citizens. She is one of the many Japanese-Americans who were interned for the duration of the war. Louie Zamperini, as a POW in Japan, and Miné Okubo, as a Japanese-American Internee both experience efforts to make them “invisible” through dehumanization and isolation in the camps of WWII, and both resist these efforts.
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.
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
During his stay in the camps, Louie observed that "The pretext for many of the outbursts was miscommunication (Unbroken)". The main reason why guards would beat up and abuse the prisoners was that the guard could not make an understandable statement when ordering the prisoners to do something. The
The Scarlet Letter is a novel that took place in the 17th century, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The heartbreaking story of the main character, Hester Prynne dispersed the reader's’ thoughts. Hester Prynne suffered from adultery, where she had a child without father’s presence and support. Hester also suffered from bullying, where she was conjectured by superior people in the Puritan Legacy. The Scarlet Letter illustrated many bullying examples throughout certain chapters of the book.
in which it is set is a small southern town just like her own with the
Have you ever heard of the saying, ‘BROKE COLLEGE STUDENT?’ When I first saw this ad for the Affinity Plus scholarship walking through St. Cloud State University (SCSU), inside of Atwood. I was having one of those days in every college student’s career, where you could imagine your whole world being on fire and in the midst of it all you could see yourself sitting somewhere, thinking to yourself, “How am I going to be able to get through this mess now?” In times like those, I always think back to a favorite author of mine Na’Mim Akbar, who said, “You can curtail my mobility but you can’t limit my mentality.” Lack of information I believe is one of the major reasons people can’t seem to solve most of their life problems. When we are not fully informed we are unable to