A Dead Body Breathing
Louie Zamperini, a childhood delinquent, an olympic athlete, an Air Force bomber, faced his greatest challenge when he was captured by the Japanese in World War II. Louie was forced to discover how resilient he could be in the face of overwhelming hopelessness. In Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand shares Louie’s story while aiming the narration to a younger audience that is unable to understand the atrocious and degrading experiences that World War II prisoners of war (POWs) often endured. Hillenbrand evokes feelings of sympathy through the use of restatement, vivid imagery, and halting syntax, while sustaining an enlightening tone, in order to achieve her purpose.
Hillenbrand begins by exploring some of the psychological obstacles that Louie had to overcome. One way she does this is by restating the word “dehumanized”, when the she writes, “to be cleaved from and cast below” (188). “To be cleaved from or cast below” is to be separated and put beneath while to be dehumanized is to be separated and degraded from what makes someone human. This is addressing something that most…show more content… She uses words such as “staggering” and “crawled” to convey to the readers that Louie struggled to keep his dignity during the war (188). These words evoke feelings of sympathy from the audience because the audience knows how humiliating it is when you stagger or are forced to crawl. It is a sign of being weak, helpless, and defeated. She also uses “cries” and “groaning” to illustrate Louie’s pain and desperation (188). When someone cries or groans, others know this person is in pain and are not strong enough to persevere. This conveys to the readers how the Japanese sought to take away Louie’s dignity by forcing him to appear weak and defeated. Hillenbrand’s descriptive diction illustrates the degrading experiences Louie encountered during his days in
