Survival In The Movie 'Unbroken'

The Choice to Survive
Bob Marley once stated, “You never know how strong you are, until being strong is the only choice you have”. If one looks into these words they would see that survival is an option, but the choice to survive comes from within a person, in a hard situation. To do this there are three main traits that a survivor must possess. Surviving is a choice done through faith, hope, and strength.
By having tremendous faith, one can decide to survive through difficult situations. Faith is the confidence and full trust in God, with this trust a person is able to survive through tough situations. Portrayed in the book The Devil in Pew Number Seven, by Rebecca Alonzo, is how to rely on faith for survival. When Rebecca was little her
Hope is a desire for something while having a feeling of trust in the situation, that can then cause survival. In the movie Unbroken, directed by Angelina Jolie, it tells a story of survival through the eyes of the main character Louis Zamperini, portrayed by actor Jack O’Connell. After living through the plane crash, Louis and the two other survivors were sitting on a raft when he reminded them, “Don’t think about it”, to which the other guy replied, “we’re gonna die”. With hope Louis replied, “no we’re not”. (Unbroken). This highlights that even when in a horrible position, by just having an uplifting and hopeful spirit he was able to make them survivors and help them make it through the 48 days at sea. Another great example of hope can be seen in the book The Kite Runner. Amir asked Sohrab to go back to America with him. Sohrab asked that he never send him back to an orphanage to which Amir responded, “I won’t ever let that happen. I promise you that” (Hosseini 324). A promise is what Amir gives him. What is a promise if not just a way someone measures hope. With that promise it gives Sohrab hope for a better future and Amir and his wife hope for a son. However, hope and faith are more of a mental state, while strength in survival is not only mental but
Amir once again shows a multitude of mental and physical strength while he is being beaten by Assef. Because of watching what happened to Hassan, Amir carried with him a great weight. But as Assef is hurting him he starts laughing and says, “My body is broken… but I felt healed. Healed at last. I laughed” (Hosseini 289). In this section of the book it displays how through this “healing”, Amir finds strength within himself and makes a decision to survive. He shows that with a new mindset he is physically made stronger as he goes on and heals his body but also as he recovers his mind from his past. Physical strength can come from within a person that is so strongly motivated to survive. This is also shown through the character Louis in Unbroken. Towards the end of the movie he is shown at the Korean camp and ordered to keep a giant piece of wood above his head. The guard specifically says if he drops it to shoot him. He gets to a point where he is struggling to keep it up, when out of nowhere he gets the physical strength to defy the guard that despises him by lifting the wood even higher (Unbroken). Everyone seems to be surprised by this outburst, however, he chose to survive and with strength he defied all odds and pushed even harder. Being put in a life or death situation helped him gather all of his physical and mental strength to survive. Even with physical and mental strength, it seems that a person would