Resilience, And Redemption In Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken

Unbroken is an exceptionally matchless tale that takes the reader on a journey through Lieutenant Louie Zamperini’s engrossing life story. Author Laura Hillenbrand captures every aspect of Zamperini’s life from his early years as a juvenile delinquent, to his advancement as an Olympic runner, and to later on his incarceration in a Japanese camp as a POW. Unbroken has several prevalent themes which are survival, resilience, and redemption. Despite his many hardships Louie remained driven and determined. “If you’re going through hell keep on going” isn’t a direct quote used in Unbroken but it can be attributed to Louie because he was able to withstand all odds and come out unbroken. Hillenbrand promotes clear images that make the reader experience

Unlike some biographies Hillenbrand makes sure to lay the proper foundation and make the reader very familiar with Louie’s childhood because his childhood was the basis for how his character would be able to fully develop. The story begins with an introduction into Louie’s childhood. Louie grew up in Torrance California; his family was Italian immigrants who struggled with poverty, prejudice and the added boundary of language. Since his family was impoverished Louie restored to stealing as a way of helping out his family. He was infamous throughout the town as a juvenile delinquent. On the occasions that he would be caught thieving his victims would chase after him but they could never catch him. Pete Louie’s older brother took notice to Louie’s speed and encouraged him to join track instead of causing trouble. Pete began training Louie and Louie developed into a world-class runner. Louie set his sights for the Olympics and ran the 5,000 meters at the 1936 Berlin Olympics; he fell short of gold and placed in seventh place. Louie still determined to place gold in the Olympics began

Zamperini being a former Olympian was viewed as a very valuable propaganda tool, thus he was far too precious to kill. However, his stardom also made him very subjective to torture. He experienced a remorseless regimen of assaults such as starvation, humiliation, slave labor, disease, and medical experiments. Although, the guards tortured every POW quite equally, Mutsuhiro Watanabe, AKA the Bird, who was the leading officer of the camp derived a special, almost sexually stimulating pleasure from beating Zamperini. After being subjected to abuse for over two years, Zamperini and his fellow prisoners were successfully saved by Hiroshima and