Unbroken: The Resilience of Louis Zamperini

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Unbroken: a World War II story of survival, resilience, and redemption. By Laura Hillenbrand (pp. x, 387) Laura Hillenbrand was using Unbroken and the story of Louis Zamperini to inform us on just one of many inspiring stories from World War II. Laura interviewed Louis 75 times and since then Laura has been so fascinated by his amazing story. The troops are not back in their barracks, the guns not cold, before the first bestsellers hit the shelves. And as for the old wars, some catch the public's imagination and some do not. The first world war and, before it, the Napoleonic wars have managed to lodge themselves deep in our consciousness, while dozens of publications have failed. Perhaps that is why I felt a little surprised to see the subject …show more content…

Everyone had given up on him everyone but his brother Pete that is. Pete begged Louis’ principal to let him join the track team in which Pete was already a star of. The principal finally gave in and let Louis join. Throughout his last three years of high school Louis was undefeated, and this brought optimism for Louis and his family. Louis qualified to go to the 1936 summer olympics when he tied with record holder Don Lash. I believe this part is the most important because his running changed his delinquent life around. On, Zamperini and Phillips, 47th day adrift they reached land in the Marshall islands and they were immediately captured by the Japanese. Zamperini was transferred to Naoetsu POW camp where he spent the rest of the war at. He was heavily tormented Mutsuhiro “Bird” Watanabe. The most significant part was when Bird make Louis hold a very heavy Log thingy over his head. Louis was exhausted but he knew he could not give up and Bird thought he had defeated Louis. Louis Took the bar, that was resting on his shoulders, and held it as high as he could over his head and screamed as loud as he could. This made Bird uncomfortably angry and Bird beat him so bad that he was close to death, because he knew that he could not break Zamperini. After the war Zamperini had horrible nightmares that he got rid of by becoming an alcoholic. He went with his wife one day to church to listen to a pastor

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