Book Report On Unbroken By Laura Hillenbrand

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. Mischievous and troublesome, Louie stole things, played many tricks on people, and always defied authority. However, Louie often gave away what he stole

Thankfully, Louie and Phil weren’t killed on Kwajalein, and instead moved to an interrogation camp called Ofuna. Ofuna had incredibly strict rules for the prisoners and even the slightest mistake would provoke a beating of extreme proportions, sometimes killing the men. After months of being at Ofuna, Phil was sent to a mining camp called Ashio. Louie was left at Ofuna where a plan was made between Louie and a two other soldiers. They were going to escape, but the plan was abandoned soon after it was made because the guards said that, for every escapee, several captive officers would be shot. While life was difficult for Louie at Ofuna, he still managed to show his bravery in his actions. Many of the men at Ofuna stole, but never anything like what Louie did. He stole a newspaper from the camp general’s office: “The newspaper was still there, sitting on the desk. Louie

Amongst those freed, was Louie. Even after everything that had happened to him, he continued to show his bravery, and others believed he was brave as well. An example of one of these people was Louie’s father, Anthony Zamperini, who said, “Those Japs couldn’t break him. My boy’s pretty tough, you know.” Louie Zamperini was happy to be home, but in his dreams, the bird followed and tormented him, and, to cope with this, he began to drink and smoke. A while after Louie had gotten home, he fell in love with a girl named Cynthia Applewhite, and they soon got married. Cynthia and Louie had a daughter they named Cynthia, after her mother. At one time, Cynthia made Louie go to a church sermon, where his life changed an awful lot. During the sermon, Louie had a flashback of a time when he was on the raft, dying of thirst, and at that time he had prayed to god and said if god gave them water, he would devote his life to god. It had rained after that. Then, when Louie got home, he dumped his alcohol down the drain, and he threw his cigarettes down the trash chute, smiling and singing all the time. A few weeks afterwards, he made a difficult decision, after learning that Mutsuhiro Watanabe was alive, the first thing he said was, “I want to see him”(402). This must have taken a lot of courage because this was the man who he had feared for so long, and he had made plans to kill twice. The date was