Unbroken Theme

Laura Hillenbrand’s monumental Unbroken is a true story of a promising young Olympic runner from Torrance, California. This promise was soon broken because of the upcoming Second World War, a time period of ferocity and sadism. During this war, many were captivated, many died, only a few came out in a single piece known as war heroes. The war wasn’t the end for these heroes, many caught on with the phrase, post-war life. Post-war life had many survivors on another set of problematic and unforgettable experience. Most Americans initially viewed their place in the postwar world with optimism and confidence. But within two years of the end of the war, new challenges and perceived threats had arisen to erode that confidence. The ultimate hero was
Louie’s perseverance was arguably the most important factor in his success. Many during Louie’s time weren’t as courageous, and easily gave up through hardship. But Louie, astonishingly kept on going, and enduring the most of it all, reaching to the end. This theme has its show throughout the entire story, from surviving crashes, living with sharks, surviving in POW (prisoner of war) camps, and dosed with PTSD. FOr example, a major event that leads Louie and some of his friends to being captivated is the Green Hornet crash in the Pacific. As Hillenbrand states, “Sensing the ocean coming up at the plane, he took a last glance at the twisting sky, then pulled the life raft in front of him and pushed his head into his chest… there were only jagged, soundless sensations: his body catapulted forward, the plane breaking open, something wrapping itself around him, the cold slap of water, and then its weight over him.”(pg 119). Louie shows his extraordinary endurance by living on the Pacific for 47 days, edging closer to the Japanese finding food by hunting and quenching their thirst. For instance, “Louie tried a new technique. Instead of allowing large pools of water to gather, he began sucking the captured water into his mouth, then spitting it in the cans. Once the cans were full, he kept harvesting the rain, giving one man a
Louie’s story shows the reader that suffering always an end to it, you just need to be patient and endure through it. This is showed through Louie’s experience in the POW camps. He was under cruel punishment and sadism by a Imperial Japanese Army sergeant Mutsuhiro Watanabe (the Bird). The Bird brings torment and torture upon Louie Zamperini. The details of all the sufferings won’t be enough to show the immense amount of rage it brought to Louie. As an overall note of the persecutions by the Bird, Louie states in a letter to him, “It was not so much due to the pain and suffering as it was the tension of stress and humiliation that caused me to hate with a vengeance. Under your discipline, my rights, not only as a prisoner of war but also as a human being, were stripped from me. It was a struggle to maintain enough dignity and hope to live until the war’s end.”(Epilogue). Louie’s patience strikes a reader with compassion and motivation. One major example of his suffering was a moment in Louie’s life that was not so easily removed from his memory. As stated in Unbroken, “He pulled himself upright, but fell again with the next punch, and then the next. Eventually, he blacked out. When he came to, the Bird forced the men to resume punching him… By Wade’s estimate, each man had been punched in the face some 220 times.”(pg 290). Louie and many other’s sufferings’ proved their resilience with