Unbroken Short Story

TOPIC- Louie learned resilience, and with that he learned how to feed himself in order to live through the harsh conditions of the prisoner of war camps and the open ocean.

It was late one day in June, and the sky was as blue and clear as sparkling wine. I sat back in my hammock reading the book Unbroken enjoying myself, and my uncle came up and asked me if I wanted to play poker with him, 5$ buy in. I jumped at the idea finished my page and went inside the house. Poker is a pretty big thing in my family and I’ve grown up playing and my uncle was one of the best, so spending time with him playing poker is always one of my favorite things to do. We proceed to set up the table, “Texas Holdem“ he says, Jacks to open”. Nothing weird, so we get the game going and the pots getting pretty big when all of the sudden he drops his cards. I stare the cards dead in the eye and see that i'm going to surpass him! He looks

spill into the sea. Though audience might have had to do a double take, because if you look carefully the camera does show the shark, the shark is the one that flipped over the raft. After everybody’s out of the water it is silent like the previous attack not necessarily calm but perhaps subdued shock.

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.

They have little energy and are no longer sure of rescue. This is, in my opinion the most interesting part of the story emotionally. The characters seem truelly desperate and nothing makes for a better story than a bit of desperation. Their struggle is intense and realistic. it becomes easy to picture these men struggling to survive against the harsh winter waves. How hard they struggle is both ironic and amusing. The narator describes the crew as the correspondent sees them. "The oiler was ahead in the race. He was swimming strongly and rapidly." The oiler is obviously trying the hardest to survive; a wasted effort on his part. "Off to the correspondent's left, the cook's great white and corked back bulged out of the water, and in the rear the captain was hanging with his one good hand to the keel of the overturned dingey." The captain and cook are struggling as well but barely manage to hold on. In my opinion this shows how useless they are to the whole party. The captain has done nothing but shot orders and the cooks optimism did nothing to help the

They are feared by Louie and the crew more than starvation or drowning. Initially, they are slightly peaceful, swimming around the raft, sizing up these mysterious beings in their ocean. The sharks circling around them reminds Louie that the natural world’s dangers are all around him (Florman int). The shark’s first attack happens when the crew is attacked by planes armed with guns. Louie stays under one of the rafts by himself, when a shark comes swimming briskly towards him, and he hits it, but it comes back: “The shark flinched, circled away, and then swam back for a second pass.

Although the men had survived the plane crash, their survival abilities were about to be tested with sharks as well as hunger and thirst. As Louis and the two men climbed into the small raft, sharks began to circle them and stuck with the men as they floated. “He was kneeling there when one of the sharks that he had touched leapt from the water at terrific speed, mouth wide open, lunging straight at his head...trying to get its mouth around his upper body. Louis, his hands on the animal’s snout, shoved as hard as he could, and the shark splashed back into the water. A moment later, the second shark jumped up. Louis grabbed an oar and struck the shark in the nose” (167-168). Louis was able to react quickly to his current predicament while staying relatively calm and doing what he believed would force the shark back into the water. In addition, right after the plane crash, Mac ate the entire supply of chocolate that the rafts were equipped with. Louis, understandably upset with Mac’s action, angered Louis since they had no other

The men would most likely have died facing the tough obsticals of the San Francisco bay the island was surrounded by. The text clearly states the words “shark infested waters of the bay”. If any kind of struggle like waves would have happened on the boat a shark would probably attempt to eat the men thinking it was some kind of prey in a struggle. The text also states

As a young man, before he was drafted into the army, Zamperini was a great olympic runner. Throughout the book, Zamperini is bombarded with all sorts of military survivorship tests beginning with the crash of their ship into the Pacific. The three men who survived, including Zamperini, starved with only a few droplets of fresh water every day on a tiny raft surrounded by deadly sharks for 47 days (Hillenbrand, 115). An average person can survive three weeks (21 days) without food. The act of surviving this time, feeding on virtually nothing, without going crazy or dying was incredible all by itself.

I managed to make very few promises in my lifetime. The majority of them were with my mother, her pleading eyes telling me to stray away from things that could "harm" me. Usually after the first week or so it was broken, and the guilt washed away in time, but when Ruby Ramirez made one with me I knew I would have to keep my word.

Loss of willpower or sanity, for instance, was a very large struggle for the people that died, along with the ones that lived. The water that they had to float in for days was so tantalizing and seemed like such an easy way to quench the thirst that plagued their bodies, such a simple solution that would cure such a large problem but cause an even bigger one. When they took the first big mouthful of that warm salt water it marked the end of their lives, the feeling of relief and satisfaction would be soon lost when you are pushed away from the group to die. If the salt water they had consumed did not kill them first the sharks would. The sharks that circled around them stuck more fear in the men every time they moved around the group, picking out which seamen looked the most ripe for picking. The men who were badly injured and the men that couldn't swim had to hope that the ones supporting them didn't get dragged under or at least let go of a life jacket as they went down. The psychological trauma was one of the largest struggles in the water those

To me she was absolutely perfect. I did not understand why she looked at me with such disgust. She constantly tore herself apart and I hated this. Quinn was no longer the nine year old girl with pig tails and braces who loved to see her reflection, she was now an eighteen year old girl who constantly avoided me. I miss the way she used to look at me with her bright blue eyes and her beautiful smile. At one point in time, she adored me and I miss that about her.

I woke up in the middle of the night to the flash of lightning which was quickly followed by the loud boom of thunder. My entire body was shivering from the freezing cold rain water that had completely drenched my attempt at a shelter. Since I have never had to build a shelter before, it was not sturdy at all. When the rain had pounded down upon it, the top of the shelter had caved in and then eventually collapsed leaving me with no shelter at all.

Sheriff Eldritch Meeks straightened his hat and emerged from the Chevy Bel Air. Its beacon singed into the back of his neck. Red. Eldritch watched thin sheets of dust sweep down the highway. Everything was fuzzy. He wiped rain from his eyes and took a deep breath. The knife twisted harder into his brainstem. Headaches. The pain was getting worse. Stabbing. Pinching. Wriggling. Eldritch needed a cup of coffee and a cigarette. He needed a fucking detox. But it would have to wait.

The agent kept his gaze locked on Dave, while responding to her. “I have friends in the area.”