Who Is Louie Zamperini Tenacious?

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.

At the beginning of his life, Louie’s delinquent behavior led to him barely escaping the eugenicists of the cull. In

In Unbroken, the text says, “He found himself thinking of Pete, and of something that he had said as they had sat on their bed years earlier: A lifetime of glory is worth a moment of pain. Louie thought: Let

What This Says About the Book: This quote obviously gave “Unbroken” its name, especially the final sentence of “He cannot break me.” Throughout this entire book, the author is trying to capture Louie’s struggle and then shock the reader with how Louie continues to survive. But this passage acts as the essence of it all, as we see both of these things written in a blatantly bold manner.

Louie never was the one to break down and give up. The Bird took a huge toll on the way that Louie felt internally. The fact that Louie was brutally beaten, degraded, and dehumanized, Louie’s spirits remain unbroken. As a child, Louie always seemed to be a rule breaker and having some type of secret defiance. Louie kept a diary which to the guards, was a punishable offense . Louie wrote in the diary daily, while hiding it under the floor in his barrack. Throughout the novel, it is clear that Louie’s dignity is the most important thing enabling the men to survive. Although their bodies were broken, they refuse to allow their dignity to be taken away as well with their survival

During the seminar, someone asked: “Was Louie truly unbroken throughout the book?” Although this book was titled Unbroken, I believe the protagonist Louie had the spirit of being unbroken but didn’t stay unbroken throughout the book. First of all, one example of Louie having the unbroken spirit was when he was told to hold the six foot beam by the Bird. When Louie was slowly sliding into unconsciousness holding the beam, he thought: “He cannot break me” (302). Malnutrition, sickness, and other physical conditions were possessed by Louie that day, but he somehow managed to hold the beam for 37 minutes. However, Louie did not stay unbroken throughout the novel. Furthermore, the author lets us see the ‘broken Louie’ in Part V. In the beginning

From the beginning, Hillenbrand highlights a series of specific details to exaggerate Zamperini’s uncontainable personality that would carry him through the war. Page fifteen states, “To get even with a railcar conductor who wouldn’t stop for him, Louie greased the rails. When a teacher made him stand in the corner for spitballing, he deflated her car tires with toothpicks. After

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

He always will take charge of the situation and discovers ways to resolve problems. For example, when Louie, Mac and Phil were on the life raft after the plane crash, “There were two gashes on Phil’s forehead, spurting blood. Louie ran his fingers down Phil’s throat until he felt a pulse, the carotid artery, then put Mac’s hand on it and told him to press down. He pulled off his top shirt and T-shirt and pulled Phil’s shirts off as well... He folded Phil’s shirt, pressed it into the wounds, then tied the other T-shirts around his head” (104).

With Louie’s unusual personality, his troublesome ways, and his athletic ability. Louie was always the center attention. When Louie was captured and threw into internment camps, he gradually lost his unusual personality and his way of visibility. Like many POW’s, Louie Zamperini, experienced the efforts to make them and other POWs invisible. During World War II, Louie was dehumanized by being beaten and humiliated by the guards at his internment camps. The guards grew angry and took everything out on the prisoners. Hillenbrand writes in Unbroken, “ Nearly every day, they flew into rage that usually ended with Phil and Louie being spat upon and bombarded with rocks and cigarettes” (140). Louie got daily rounds of spit on, rice was thrown at them and handfuls of rocks and cigarettes mauled at them. Louie was just not dehumanized by getting beaten and humiliated, he was also dehumanized by being isolated from the outer world. Phil and Louie were blindfolded on the Japanese ship and was shoved into a cell. “Louie’s back struck a wall and he fell to a floor. That wasn’t Zamperini's worst nightmare, it was Mutsuhiro Watanabe, also named The Bird. Louie was deathly scared of the Bird .Someone yanked off his blindfold. A door slammed, a lock turned.”(Hillenbrand 134). Louie is forced into a cell by Japanese guards. He was all alone and cut off from Mac and the outside world. Even when Louie and other POWs

Louie Zamperini is known as a hero and is very honorable for his time at World War 2. When Louie meets Cynthia for the 2nd time and she recognises him when he came. Cynthia said, “He was a war hero…” (,248). He was so important that people were astonished when finding out he was not dead. “He was a national sensation…” (,245) Said countless people that admired Louie.

Louie the main character of this story starts out as delinquent. He robs, gets in fights all the time, and gets in trouble all the time. When he enters high school he figures he needs to change. In the beginning of high school he got

Louie had conquered the hardest challenges of his life, but it wasn’t over yet. In this example, Louie’s father’s own words help readers determine the effect of Louie’s courage on other people:” ‘Those Japs couldn’t break him,’ Anthony said. ‘My boy’s pretty tough, you know’ ” (392). Although the government had told Louie’s family that he was dead, they had never once given up on him. One March afternoon, Louie met a beautiful woman named Cynthia Applewhite, consequently falling in love with her. After knowing her for less than two weeks, Louie asked her to marry him: “She told him told him that she’d help forget his past, and he grasped her promise as a lifeline. ‘If you love me enough,’ he wrote back, ‘I’ll have to forget it. How much can you love?’” (350). Despite the hardships they might face together, Louie had enough courage to marry Cynthia no matter what. Louis’ nightmares were often visited by the Bird, and he developed a habit of drinking to cope with the post traumatic stress of the war. All he could think of was murderous rage and hatred towards the Bird. Cynthia filed for a divorce, but told Louie she would stay with him if he went with her to see a Billy Graham show. For the first time in years, Louis remembered the promise he had made to God when he was floating in the Pacific. A leap of faith and undying courage prompted him to make a life altering decision and accept Christ. A changed man, Louis had the courage to give others an opportunity to change also. In 1950, Louis returned to Japan to forgive his former captors whom he had once hated. Mutsuhiro “the Bird” Watanabe was the only one who did not agree to meet

Gary was a kid who worked hard for money but often got it stolen by gangs of boys. Eventually he finds a beast that later becomes his friend named dirk. The day he finds Dirk he decides to punch the gang leader Happy in the face. Courage describes his action he made that night even though it was a bad idea because he got punched and kicked

As of what Louie’s mother said you can tell he’s rebellious. “Louie was untamable and a born