Unbroken Research Paper

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.

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

What I Think: After yet more humiliation and abuse from the Bird, Louie loses all but a single thought: “He cannot break me.” I think it is incredible how, after so much exhaustion and agony Louie only thinks about how he will not succumb to it all.

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

In Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken, Louie Zamperini experienced many situations that were both lucky and unlucky. These events helped shape him into who he is and prove that sometimes luck prevails. The Green Hornet crash, the rescue from the sea, and the aftermath of the war are all examples of lucky and unlucky instances that Louie Zamperini faced that left him “unbroken”.

Louie survives, even when a sadistic guard nicknamed “the Bird” who especially attacked Louie personally. The Bird singles Louie out and tortures him mentally and physically abuses him the most of everyone, including the infamous scene where Louie is forced to hold a large wooden log above his head until told other wise and if he dropped it a guard was ordered to kill him on the spot. After the war is declared over, American planes dropped food and other supplies to the camps including Louie’s. Back home being a very different man malnutritioned and unable to run, Louie reunites with his family, who have all worried themselves almost to death about him being missing or presumed dead. Later Louie married Cynthia Applewhite. They have a daughter, but Louie now has an alcohol addiction and has flashbacks of the war and his time spent on the raft and in the prison camps he was trapped in. Louie still cannot run or find a new career; he only wants to murder the Bird because of what he did to him and because he singled him out to inflict pain upon. When Cynthia files for divorce, Billy Graham comes to town and starts some tent preaching

“The Bird was no longer his monster, he was only a man” (Page 379). This stated quote explains how Louie went from plotting to kill the Bird, to forgiving him which was due to the speech that Bill Graham had spoken. Louie remembered a prayer he made on the raft quoting, “If you will save me, I will serve you forever” (Page 375). This memory caused Louie to find God and realize that he is “unbroken” from surviving the plane crash, to living on the raft, and finally through the torture gave by the Bird at the POW camps. Not only did Louie forgive the Bird for his actions against him, but he had forgiven Sasaki and the other guards at the POW camps as

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

He became a forgiving person. Louie experienced PTSD after his experiences in the POW camp. He had horrible dreams about the Bird. One day, Louie agreed with wife to go hear a minister named, Billy Graham speak about God. Touched by Billy’s message, he realized he had to fulfill his promise and serve God. Therefore, he wrote a letter to the Bird. “ At that moment, like the others, I also forgave you and now would hope that you would also become a Christian (Pg. 281)”. This quote shows how Louie forgave the Bird even after the Bird tortured him every day while he was in the POW camp. This shows that Louie turned into a forgiving person due to his desire to move on and pardon those who hurt him, Another example of Louie’s forgiveness was when he visited his captors in Japan, The text states, “ In bewilderment, the men who had abused him watched him come to them, his hands extended, a radiant smile smile on his face (Pg. 273)”. This quote shows how Louie wants to make peace with the people who once abused him. This shows how Louie is a forgiving person since he wanted to move on from the past and start a new life. Louie stayed like this throughout the rest of his

Later in Louie's life he joins the Army Aircorps. All was well for louie, until he was sent on a rescue mission. During the mission Louie's plane goes down. Later a horrific journey on a raft in the ocean he is captured by the japanese, and becomes a POW. Many incidents in Unbroken reveal that Louie is hopeful, Intelligent, and determined.

Here is one POWs description of the bird, “He became a monster, he beat Pows everyday fracturing their windpipes, rupturing their eardrums, shattering their teeth, tearing one man's ear half off, tying another to a tree for days. To make matters worse, the Bird made it his personal goal to shatter Louie. Louie’s body was covered with scars from the Watanabe’s beatings. The bird also haunted Louie mentally, “When Louis woke each morning, his first thought was of the bird” Louie lived in the constant fear of being beat by Watanabe. Underneath this kind of pressure, many other people would have cracked, but not Louie

Robert H. Schuller once stated, “Tough times don’t last, but tough people do.” In the novel Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, Louie struggles with fitting in anywhere and staying out of trouble. He was constantly doing things to cause trouble and making mistakes. Pete, Louie’s brother pushes him to run to escape his troubles. Throughout Zamperini’s life, he gains perseverance which gave him the ability to survive through life.

Across the compound, the Bird had stopped laughing” (p. 302).He was holding that stick for 37 minutes simply “filling” his body with the energy of his own words and thoughts that convinced him about how strong his is. More than once Louie had shown his firm power, confidence and purposefulness which helped him survive and stay cold-blooded. Only strong will to live lead him to his light -to

“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.

During the next two years, Louie endures physical and psychological torture by his captors. During this time, a major character is introduced, Mutsuhiro Watanabe (a.k.a. the Bird), who is a head Japanese captain at the camp where Louie is being taken to be held prisoner. He makes the creepy guard from The Green Mile seem like a guy you'd love to bring home to dinner. On the day Louie arrives to the camp, The Bird recognizes Louie for his Olympic performance and forces him to race against one of his soldiers; however, Louie is frail due to lack of food and water and is humiliated in defeat. The Bird is very hard on him, and is the predominant source of mental and physical abuse from which Louie suffers at this camp. Louie, being the strong-willed fighter that he is, continues to endure and remain physically and emotionally unbroken until he eventually catches a break when The Bird is offered a better job at another camp. After the war interferes with his camp, Louie is moved to a different camp, which ends up being the same camp where The Bird had transferred. The Bird continues to be ruthless and relentless towards Louie and directs his wrath at Louie far worse than any other prisoner, especially when he determines that Louie is attempting to boost the morale of other prisoners. In this time period in the book, hope and motivation are shown as Louie continues to fight through the abuse at the hands of his