Nonfiction Navigators discussion

One never knows his or her limits until he or she has been pushed to them. We see new discoveries being made, records being broken, and unthinkable technology being invented. So who sets human limits? We do. In Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption we see a man who is continuously faced with limits and each time he pushes through them. Author, Laura Hillenbrand, takes us on a journey through the many twists and turns in the life of Louie Zamperini.

At the start of the book, Hillenbrand quickly hooks the readers by setting the stage with the horrific scene of a hunger stricken Louie Zamperini trapped on a raft in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, surrounded by swarms of sharks while Japanese fighter planes shoot at him. From the moment I started reading I was fascinated by the convoluted life of Louie Zamperini. In his younger days, Zamperini was an anxious delinquent who wreaked havoc on his small town in California in the form of pranks and theft. With the help of his older brother, Zamperini began running. He learned to take his anxiety and turned it into motivation. Readers immediately become Zamperini’s biggest fan as he breaks through, at the time, unbreakable records. He quickly became one of the fastest runners in the world; he was the youngest American runner to go to the Olympics and placed 8th in the overall race. Determined to do better, Zamperini pushed himself to train harder. His training was disrupted, however, by the start of World War II.

Zamperini was drafted and became a Bombardier. One tragic day at sea, Zamperini’s plane went crashing down in the middle of the Pacific Ocean leaving him stranded on a raft with no supplies. The rest of the book follows Zamperini’s story of survival on the raft and the gory details of several prisoner-of-war camps Zamperini was sent to. We see the effect the war had on Zamperini and the rest of the heroic veterans through their struggles and hardships when they returned home.

This book felt like a maze in which every corner the reader turns is navigated with the assumption that the end is just around the bend but when he or she actually turns they are faced with another wall to navigate. Hillenbrand creates this feeling that the reader has a personal connection with Zamperini and one can’t help but groan every time a search plane doesn’t see him in the middle of the ocean or a new Japanese General tortures him.

It doesn’t take a total history geek to love this book. I have never been very interested in war and would not consider myself fascinated by the events of the past, but the story of Zamperini’s life left me feeling astonished and impressed. This book was inspiring because Zamperini refuses to let limits define him and continued to break through them. For readers who have sensitive stomachs when it comes to gruesome images, this book might be a difficult read. The specific details Hillenbrand uses when describing scenes during the war help readers to truly grasp the extreme conditions and pain experienced throughout the war. Whatever your situation might be, Unbroken is a thrilling story of a man who did nothing but push limits.