Unbroken By Laura Hillenbrand: Character Analysis

Words: 922
Pages: 4

He had thrown himself past the finish line innumerable times, his feet had been raw, his face was once slick with sweat, his head had buzzed with the adrenaline of winning. The legs that had once carried him through the Olympics, and outrun Nazis were now crumpled under him, lifeless and emaciated. The names of nine ghost marines etched on the cell wall, their last will and testament. He reached up with a sinewy arm, carving his name into the stone: “Louis Zamperini”. He would not go down without a fight, a naturally defiant man, he would run, and it would be a barnburner. Louie Zamperini had been a ruffian. The son of Italian immigrants in a prejudiced California. The wily youngest Zamperini boy, who stole pies from his neighbors, got drunk under the table, and ran through the town …show more content…
He would one day become a war hero and one of the youngest Olympians of his time. Laura Hillenbrand, in her enthralling novel Unbroken, explored the trials and tribulations of this amazing track star. Louie, with hundreds others, would soon learn...“The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.” - Douglas MacArthur, WWII Chief of Staff. Losing hope can detrimentally affect people.
Louie Zamperini’s plane, the Green Hornet crashed into the ocean on a routine rescue mission and drifted with two comrades some 2,000 miles away from the downed site and straight into the Marshall Islands, and the clutches of the Japanese military. Louie and the only other survivor of the crash, Allen “Phil” Phillips, were sent to some of the arguably most brutal Japanese POW camps in the whole war and forced to face one of the cruelest guards ever to walk there, Mutsuhiro Watanabe… The Bird. Louie’s spirit was being crushed in the camps. When Louie entered one of his earliest