Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption I. Identification of Work Hillenbrand, L. (2010). Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. New York: Random House. II. Summary of the Main Ideas Unbroken by Lauren Hillenbrand is a World War II story that follows the life of Louie Zamperini and his journey of survival, resilience, and redemption. We meet Louie as a young boy form Torrance, California who comes from Italian immigrants. As a delinquent boy, he’s always in trouble and running into the law. His older brother, Pete, introduces him to track as a distraction from all his criminal past times, and it turns out he was born to run. His body was mechanically made for it; he goes the Olympics. Soon, like …show more content…
Miraculously, Phil and Louie are able to survive life on the raft and make it to land. However, they end up over enemy lines. The Japanese then capture them and imprison them, where they are tortured endlessly for years until the war ends. Louie suffers severe posttraumatic stress disorder and battles with alcoholism. It’s not until Louie goes to a sermon and rediscovers god that he is saved and is free from the war memories in his mind, finally redeeming himself. III. Critical Evaluation of Work. Louie’s redemption is by far the most fascinating section of the novel. A promise he makes to God, while he’s castaway at sea, anchors him to a commitment to serve the Lord if he was saved. The vow slips his mind for years. It’s not until his wife, Cynthia, brings him to see a traveling Evangelist preacher, Billy Graham, that Louie is called to Christ. If any troubled soul needed revival, Louie may have been first in line; he spent all of his time drowning in alcohol, his PTSD led him to violence, and he didn’t even recognize his own child. Cynthia has to drag Louie to Graham’s tent, where he sits in the very back despising every