Survival Resilience And Redemption In The Book Unbroken

In Unbroken: A world war 2 story of survival, resilience, and redemption- by Laura Hillenbrand; young Louie Zamperini is a delinquent of Torrance, California. He steals food, runs around like hell and even dreams of hoping on a train and running away for good. However, Pete, his older manages to turn his life around by turning his love of running from the law into a passion for track and field. Zamperini is so fast that he breaks his high school’s mile record, resulting in him attending the olympics in berlin in 1936. His running career however was put on hold when World war 2 broke out, he enlisted in the the Air Corps and becomes a bombardier. During a harrowing battle, the “superman” gets hit numerous times with japanese bullets destroying

Later On in the book, Bill Graham comes to town and persuades his wife to change her mind, and she convinces Zamperini to attend one of his preaching sessions. Zamperini remembered the bargain he made to god while stuck on the raft and attends the meetings. He then then found faith from the sessions which helped him quit drinking and becoming a motivational speaker. Years later, Zamperini forgives all those who did him wrong during the war especially “the bird”. He reaches out to the bird when he finds out hes still alive but the the bird refuses. During the olympics in 1998, Zamperini carries the olympic torch past Naoetsu, and puts his dark past behind him. Hillenbrand Emphasis on personal strength and tenacious determination to keep going and pushing through as something to walk away with. I would rate this book a 10. The book is well written and gives a good insight into the life of a prisoner of war during World War 2. I believe that since Zamperini was a long distance runner, and long distance requires a certain mentality to push yourself for miles and miles that he was able to endure and

During World War 2, many young men like Zamperini had a sense of nationalism and joined the army to fight in this war. World War 2 was different than the first one in technological advancement. Not only was it land battle, it was air battle and marine battle. “ We just sat there and watched the plane pass the island, and it never came back… I could see it on the radar. It makes you feel terrible. Life was cheap in war (2.8.18)”. This illustrates 2 things, the fact that the technology was more deadly than the enemy and that watching people die, disappear, and not being able to do something to help was intensely hard to deal with. Moreover, at the berlin olympics, it seemed to be less about athleticism and more of about German Nazi nationalism. “ On the first of August, louie and the other olympians were driven through berlin for the opening ceremonies. Every vista suggested coiled might. Nazi banners had been prepared over everything (1.4.10)”. This showed Nazi party domination in Germany where the movement began. Lastly, The war will eventually hit Zamperini and Hillenbrand gives us an interesting similarity between the japanese and german beliefs. “ As Louie blazed through college, far away, history was turning. In europe, Hitler was laying plans to conquer the continent… Central to the japanese identity was the belief that it was Japan;s divinely mandated right to rule