Unbroken: The Journey Of Louis The Larcenist

Unbroken:The Journey of Louis the Larcenist

Stealing from others: possessions, liberties, or time, is strongly frowned upon. However, since thievery in Unbroken can be seen as a theme, reading the novel by Laura Hillenbrand, one comes across this occurrence many times in many different forms. Louis Zamperini begins and ends his journey with theft. The whole book can be juxtaposed with the theme of stealing, whether metaphorically or literally. The robbed objects are sometimes physical, as in the case of Louis’ boyhood pilfering, the theft of cigarettes and alcohol from and by his fellow pilots, and the POW prisoners’ purloining of food and other necessary goods. Many of the other obvious connections to the overarching theme, however, are

Laura Hillenbrand tells stories of Louis’ early childhood, where he made a sport of stealing from nearly everyone in the neighborhood. The focus on his larcenous adolescence sets the stage for the rest of the rest of the book, as it creates a clear and distinct picture of thievery, being literal rather than emotional or impalpable.

When the Japanese soldiers attacked Pearl Harbor, the war started stealing everything from Louis. Gone were his Olympic aspirations, and the United States being sucked into the war even stole Louis away from his budding acting career. In that moment of drafting, most of the new troops were contraband of a sort. Soldiers were being ripped from the kind clutches of their beloved towns and families and kept under the wing of the

The Hornet had been looted for parts that had been stolen, and Louis watched as another thing was stolen from him, the fair chance to survive. The war, meanwhile, continued its extended robbery of Louis and anyone else in its path, aided by “The Bird”, Mutsuhiro Watanabe, as the POWs’ freedoms and dignities were siphoned away from them in degrading ways. In Louis Zamperini’s own book, he expresses the true horror of what greeted him at the POW camps, “All my life I had kept my emotions tightly in check when it came to my own troubles, but I could no longer help myself. I broke down and cried” (Zamperini 120). There are, however, moments that one can see Louis fighting, “picking The Bird’s emotional pocket”. These are moments that are like constellations that dot the otherwise black sky of Louis’ life at that time, really bringing the idea that stealing is an important and necessary part of