Laura Hillenbrand Unbroken Theme

Michael J. Fox said, “One’s dignity may be assaulted, vandalized, and cruelly mocked, but it can never be taken away unless it is surrendered.” In Laura Hillenbrand’s novel Unbroken, the author tells the story of the main character Louie’s life. Growing up, Louie always had a strong mind. He became a well known track star and with the pressure of running, he never gives up what he was passionate about. Louie Zamperini suffers through a difficult time as a POW, yet he is able to gain back his dignity by having stubborn optimism and a tenacious will to survive.

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

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).

As a young boy, Louie Zamperini is a major troublemaker in his hometown of Torrance, California. He steals food and runs away. Pete, his older brother, helps Louie by training him and help develop his love for running after getting into trouble one too many times. Louie trains non-stop and breaks many school and state records. He gets so good that he is able to try out to be a 5000 meter olympian. Louie makes it to the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936. Unfortunately, his running career suddenly ends as World War Two begins. Louie enlists in the air corps, and he becomes a bombardier. He and his crew bond through training and battles and going to an island where his crewmates help him keep up his training by driving next to him in a car to keep

In the biography, Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand, a young boy named Louis Zamperini’s life revolved around running and training for the Olympics. Running had a huge impact on his life and ended up changing how he would act. In his early days, Louis was an irresponsible and rebellious kid. Running would later force him to buckle down and focus on running and training. Many people influenced Louis, but only one made the biggest impact on his life. That person is Pete Zamperini, Louis’ older brother.

Consequently, Louie looked up to his brother Pete, who almost never got in trouble: ‘’Pete never got caught’’ (8). Pete had been in athletics, and wanted Louie to join also; in an incident involving Louie letting people into a basketball game for free, the principal banned Louie from athletics for a time: ‘’When basketball season began, there was an inexplicable discrepancy between the number of ten-cent tickets sold and the considerably larger number of kids in the bleachers’’ (13). When Pete talked to the coach, he convinced the principal to give Louie another chance. This event had an enormous impact on Louie’s life. Once joining track, he used his determination to do good in school so that he could participate in the sport. Determination in his sports life led Louie to evolve as a man, and make him a genuinely hard worker. This hard work and determination would later lead him to the Olympics in Germany, working hard like a man getting revenge and using all his tools to get to his goal. This occurred before World War 2, so the conflict would not begin until later on. This moment could be considered another crucial part in Louie’s life, as the event foreshadows the war that would lead Louie to become stranded in the Pacific Ocean and later tortured as a

According to the great retired olympian track athlete Gail Devers, “Sometimes we fall, sometimes we stumble, but we can’t stay down. We can’t allow life to beat us down. Everything happens for a reason, and it builds character in us, and it tells us what we are about and how strong we really are when we didn’t think we could be that strong.” In Unbroken, a biography written by Laura Hillenbrand, Louis Zamperini illustrates Devers’ words with his resilience, springing back after his World War II bomber crashed and enemy forces captured him. In the end Louis’ ability to make due with every hellish situation life threw at him that influenced Hillenbrand’s aspired survival story.

Louie was able to bounce back from a lot of hard, difficult times that for some people they may have lost their dignity to keep on going. A quote that explains why resilience is such a key trait is when it says “A fist connected with Louie’s nose, and he felt a crunch” (145). Afterward Louie was able to rebound from the incident by forcing his broken nose back into place. This allowed Louie to not give up hope, therefore he was able to avoid becoming despondent. Another example of being resilient is when it says “The extremely low caloric intake and foul food put men’s lives in jeopardy” (149). Instead of Louie getting discouraged by not having much food to eat, he was able to think in his mind about a different topic to get his attention away from food and starvation. One last quote describing this trait is, “When the exercise was over, the men had to stand outside, regardless of the weather” (149). This shows that Louie and other prisoners were forced to stand outside in terrible conditions to be lectured at and even beaten if they did not make eye contact with the guards. Somehow Louie was able to endure the pain when he was beaten in front of everybody. Resilience is probably the main reason that prisoners like Louie survived because it is the ability to bounce back from a harsh environment that disrupts their

In the book, Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand, Louie Zamperini was majorly obsessed with vengeance throughout the end of the book that his life was consumed by the quest for it. Louie felt as if the Bird had stolen his dignity at the POW campsites, where he was beaten, humiliated, starved, and stripped of his powers of self-defense. Louie was overwhelmed with his anger that the only objective he sought was to get revenge on the Bird. In other words, Louie was angered about his loss of dignity at the POW campsite, he wanted to get revenge on the Bird by killing him, and how Louie eventually forgives the Bird for what he did to him. These three reasons show how Louie’s loss of self-dignity in the POW camp was pursued.

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

It was apparent, throughout the story, that Louie was a survivor. There were countless events throughout the story in which Louie´s ability to survive is seen clearly. One of these occurred when Louie clocked the fastest time for the mile in NCAA history. Louie was able to do this despite being spiked, clubbed, and trapped from moving forward in the race. This is apparent when Hillenbrand writes, “He burst through, blew past the race leader, and, with his shoe torn open, shins streaming blood, and chest aching, won easily”(44). Another example of his survival trait appearing strongly in the story occurred in the raft. After lying in a raft for weeks, Louie was still

This caused in him a feeling in which he had never felt before, and thus inspired him to new things to get himself more aquatinted with God:

JFK quickly became a imagine of true heroism in society after the United States was revealed to the event of the PT Motor Torpedo 109 crash. The boat was split in half by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri, in the middle of the night. He gathered and motivate the survivors from the PT 109 to swim to an island. Most of the crew members had severe burns and injuries. He tried to aid as many of the men that he could, but without proper supplies all they could do was hope for rescue. Some local Native Indians discovered the lost crew and informed the American Base lieutenant of the misfortunate events. The boys were found and brought back to the base to get proper medical care. Kennedy was advised to return back to America but protested and continued

Louie shows perseverance in the Olympic race. Hillenbrand writes, “In terrible pain, he took a staggering step off the track …he had no resistance to offer. Still he ran on” (Hillenbrand 26). This shows his perseverance because although Louie is in pain, he did not give up. Instead he kept running, enduring through his pain. Hillenbrand mentions, “But he had nothing to lose. He trained so hard that he rubbed the skin right off one of his toes, leaving his sock bloody” (Hillenbrand 23). Louie trained so hard that his skin had rubbed off. This shows Louie’s perseverance because even though he felt pain, he did not stop training because he was determined to win the Olympic race.

Despite JFK’s efforts to maneuver the PT-109 out of its way, the much bigger Japanese destroyer hit the PT-109 and split it down the middle. Although this cause multiple fatalities immediately, many of JFK’s crew were able to abandon ship before the flames of their burning ship consumed them. JFK, being the great swimmer that he is, lead his crew to an island that was miles away. Many of his crew were badly injured, and for the men that could not swim the distance, JFK attached a life jacket around them and swam them with the strap in his mouth to the island. After reaching the island, a few natives found JFK and his crew. JFK carved a message in a coconut and requested that the natives go find them help. One day later JFK and his remaining crew were rescued, making John F. Kennedy a hero and earning him the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for his courage and leadership. Joe Kennedy Jr. flew dangerous missions around Europe during the war, and one year after JFK’s brush with death, Joe Jr. died when his plane exploded.