Unbroken: The Journey Of Louis The Larcenist

Unbroken:The Journey of Louis the Larcenist

Stealing from others: possessions, liberties, or time, is strongly frowned upon. However, since thievery in Unbroken can be seen as a theme, reading the novel by Laura Hillenbrand, one comes across this occurrence many times in many different forms. Louis Zamperini begins and ends his journey with theft. The whole book can be juxtaposed with the theme of stealing, whether metaphorically or literally. The robbed objects are sometimes physical, as in the case of Louis’ boyhood pilfering, the theft of cigarettes and alcohol from and by his fellow pilots, and the POW prisoners’ purloining of food and other necessary goods. Many of the other obvious connections to the overarching theme, however, are

immaterial. The book centers around the journey of back and forth that takes place in Louis’ heart and mind and the accumulated possessions that others found fit to steal: His dreams, his opportunity to survive, his freedom, his dignity, and his self-control.

Beginning in his early life, Louis Zamperini had an inextricable habit of pilfering the belongings of others.

Laura Hillenbrand tells stories of Louis’ early childhood, where he made a sport of stealing from nearly everyone in the neighborhood. The focus on his larcenous adolescence sets the stage for the rest of the rest of the book, as it creates a clear and distinct picture of thievery, being literal rather than emotional or impalpable.

When the Japanese soldiers attacked Pearl Harbor, the war started stealing everything from Louis. Gone were his Olympic aspirations, and the United States being sucked into the war even stole Louis away from his budding acting career. In that moment of drafting, most of the new troops were contraband of a sort. Soldiers were being ripped from the kind clutches of their beloved towns and families and kept under the wing of the

war.

After growing to adapt to his new life as a pilot in the armed forces, he was asked to fly The Green Hornet, a rickety rustbucket of a plane that had never properly worked.

The Hornet had been looted for parts that had been stolen, and Louis watched as another thing was stolen from him, the fair chance to survive. The war, meanwhile, continued its extended robbery of Louis and anyone else in its path, aided by “The Bird”, Mutsuhiro Watanabe, as the POWs’ freedoms and dignities were siphoned away from them in degrading ways. In Louis Zamperini’s own book, he expresses the true horror of what greeted him at the POW camps, “All my life I had kept my emotions tightly in check when it came to my own troubles, but I could no longer help myself. I broke down and cried” (Zamperini 120). There are, however, moments that one can see Louis fighting, “picking The Bird’s emotional pocket”. These are moments that are like constellations that dot the otherwise black sky of Louis’ life at that time, really bringing the idea that stealing is an important and necessary part of

Unbroken,

It is only when the tides are turned and Louis and the other POWs began stealing back that the reader can clearly see the integrated power that stealing has. By looting food, newspapers, and other necessities, they were taking back what the war was taking away. As Laura Hillenbrand put this amazing transformation, “And in a place predicated on degradation, stealing from the enemy won back the men’s dignity” (Hillenbrand 250).

Even then, after he had been liberated from the horrendous situation that had been put in, Louis still found himself being stolen from- this time by his drinking addiction. His new marriage to Cynthia was shattered by his lack of self control and longing to forget his war experiences. The war still gripped tight on his mind, and through his nightmares of The Bird, still sapped at every ounce of freedom and dignity. Louis Zamperini, despite being safe at home, was still at war because like the Green Hornet, many of his parts; the ones that helped him function in an emergency or in times of stress, had been taken from him. Many of them, that is, except for thievery.

So Louis turned back to stealing. He took back the Bird’s power by running until he couldn’t run anymore. He forgave the Japanese soldiers and officers, and eventually, he stole back the last pieces of himself that the war had taken by running in the Japan Olympics. In order to be whole again, Louis had to steal. Even though thievery is generally considered wrong, it’s a crucial subject in Laura Hillenbrand’s novel, Unbroken. It takes the word to new meanings, to new heights. And though many of the possessions are immaterial, this book discusses how important truly owning all of yourself, and how empowering the theft of part of another person can be is. To a point, it makes one wonder: how much of oneself has been stolen?