An Essay On Unbroken By Laura Hillenbrand

For example, the Bird tortures the POWs by forcing them to do extreme amounts of labor along with basically starving them. The Bird targets Louie because he is a famous American, having been an Olympic athlete. The Bird hunts down Louie and constantly beats, kicks, and punches him, acts that went against the Geneva Convention, which dictated how POWs were supposed to be treated. The Bird haunts Louie’s dreams, during the war, and even after the war, until he is pronounced dead in the late 20th century. The Bird committed unthinkable acts against the POWs being held in Japan, and is very deserving of his title of “villain” in Unbroken.

After World War II started, Louie joined the army and became known for being on multiple successful bombing runs with his friends, Mac and Phil. This story depicts the theme of how anyone can fall into bad times, but they can always pick themselves up again.

Louie started as a young trouble boy, who then became into a man who was an airman during World War 2. During his POW experience many challenges came in the way, one of them being Mutsuhiro Watanabe also known as the Bird. The Bird was a Japanese corporal who ended up in the Omori Camp. During Louie’s experience at Omori with the Bird became his worst challenge and enemy since the Bird wanted to make Louie’s life a nightmare. The Bird tortured Louie for different reasons but that it never broke Louie.

The Olympics track champion Gail Devers once said, “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 the nonfiction book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, Louis Zamperini showed his bravery and proved Devers’ words when he defiantly stood against his captors at the POW camps in Japan. As a boy, Louie often misbehaved; in fact, he became known as the town menace.

While he was a POW, he was offered a spot on a Japanese radio program famous for broadcasting Axis propaganda. Though Louie did not read any pro-Japanese war messages on air, he was approached to give the world the message that he was alive, and being held captive by the Japanese. Louie knew very well that he had probably already been declared dead by the government, Louie wrote a speech and “added details that he hoped would convince [his family]” (page 253) that he was still alive. Once the broadcast reached them, it did just that, giving the Zamperinis at home a final push towards the hope that he’d one day be coming

In Hillenbrand’s gruesome novel, Louis Zamperini faces the toughest of challenges, some that are purely indescribable and difficult to comprehend for the average human, but his ability to persevere and accomplish the unheard of demonstrates his character’s ability to tackle adversity head on. After a victorious landing on a Japanese island, the men are transferred to POW camps, where they assume they will face their deaths. Both men are taken special interest in, but Zamperini especially because of his Olympic past. Zamperini first meets the “Bird” at a new POW camp and realizes that a real life nightmare has entered his life. Zamperini, anxious and angry, is unsure of how to react, “Louie was on his own.

Louie didn’t want the Bird to see him in pain because he wanted to take control and turn the power around. He needed to be resilient and stay mentally strong. Later, for stealing, the Bird had made every man in the camp punch Louie and a few others in the

Overcoming Dehumanization “Louie watched the sky and hoped the Americans would come before the Bird killed him” (181). This is one of the many examples of how the way POWs were treated in these camps influenced many lives negatively. Like many other Prisoners of War, Louie Zamperini survived several difficult conditions. He had to resist several attempts of dehumanization. In Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand uses both internal and external conflict to show that war has profound and varied effects on individuals.

Louie was beaten close to death. He was starved until he could barely move. But Louie kept going. He held on, determined that when America won the war, he’d get to go home. Louie met corporal, Mutsuhiro Watanabe, or as all the prisoners called him, the Bird.

He was singled out for punishment by one of the guards, known as "the Bird." The Bird took pleasure in torturing Louis, and his abuse became increasingly sadistic as time went on. However, Louis never gave up. He remained determined to survive and to return home to his family. After the war ended, Louis returned home to the United States, but his experiences had left him emotionally scarred.

Louie and the POWS were in a camp called Naoetsu. “Louie could take no more... He joined about a dozen officers in a secret meeting... They decided to kill the Bird” (215). Others and himself were planning to kill the Bird but when they found out the war was over the Bird left

“Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man 's soul in his body long past the point when the body should have surrendered it” (Hillenbrand 189). In the novel Unbroken, written by Laura Hillenbrand, Louis “Louie” Zamperini goes through several life-threatening experiences. After being a troublemaker as a child, and an Olympic athlete, Louie straps up his boots and becomes a bombardier for the Army Air Corps. After a traumatizing crash and a forty-six day survival at sea, Louie is taken captive by Japanese officials.

Although, I feel Louie would have been justified in killing The Bird, I do not feel like it would have been a moral act the Louie was capable of. For a man to have endured so much pain to forgive, shows tremendous strength and bravery. I also don’t feel that Louie would have ever found true peace if he would have killed The Bird. The thought that he would have been guilty of committing the same abuse that he witnessed daily would have put him over the edge.

Louie Zamperini and Commander John Fitzgerald show strength and resolution in the face of adversity. For example, when Louie’s plane crashed and the men were on the raft, Laura Hillenbrand wrote, “Louie was determined to keep himself and the others lucid”(114). During their journey on the rafts, Louie tried to keep Phil, Mac and himself hopeful in a seemingly hopeless situation. He tried to distract them from hunger and troubling thoughts by singing songs and talking about comforting memories of the past. Commander John Fitzgerald demonstrated his fortitude in Ofuna.

A Psychoanalysis on The Wars In human history, war has greatly affected the lives of people in an extremely detrimental way which can be understood in Timothy Findley’s novel The Wars through a psychoanalytic approach in character development and their deterioration; the readers are able to identify the loss of innocence intertwined between characters, the search for self-identity in the symbolic and metaphorical aspect, as well as the essence of life. Those that are not able to overcome these mental challenges may develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or Rape trauma Syndrome, and sadly, some resort to suicide as the last option to escape their insecurities. However, soldiers are not the only ones affected by war; family members also face