NBA player Larry Bird once said, “ A winner is someone who recognizes his God-given talents, works his tail off to develop them into skills, and uses these skills to accomplish his goals”. Laura Hillenbrand’s biography Unbroken showed Louie Zamperini’s talent in running and everything else he set his mind to accomplish. Overall, without Louie’s talent, it gives evidence that without it he would not have survived all of the hardships he faced.
At the beginning of Louie’s biography, we first see him using his God given talent for the wrong reasons before realizing what he could actually accomplish. He uses his traits/abilities as a way to get away with something that he did wrong: “ It is a testament that the content of Louie’s childhood…show more content… In 1943,his superb bombardier skills prevailed: “ Though Louie was miserable over having to rejoin the air corps, he trained at Texas’ Ellington Field, then Midland Army flying school, he earned remarkable test scores” ( 57). This quote is significant because Louie didn’t like flying in planes, which is why he decided to quit the Air Corps the first time. In addition, another example of Louie using his talent, as a POW is, “Louie looked at the Japanese runner and realized that he had it within himself to pass the man. He knew what would happen if he won, but the cheering and the accumulation of so many months of humiliation brought something in him to a hard point. He lengthened his stride, seized the lead, and crossed the finish line ” (216). Here we learn that even though Louie was too weak, and unable to run as good as he normally would, he did his best and it eventually paid off in the end because of his experience in the olympics and college in all of the races that he had competed in. This proves that even though Louie was weak and not his normal self, but also had a low self esteem through all of the torment that he was put through as a POW; his talent and drive helped him in all of the situations that he was in as a
