Preview

Survival Essay

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
556 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Survival Essay
“You never know how strong you are…until being strong is the only choice you have.”
(Carly Millsonce).People will even become stronger and will demonstrate their strength by facing tough decisions and challenges as shown in Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak and Lauren
Hillenbrand’s Unbroken; both characters demonstrate their strength to survive by overcoming challenges in their life. When they learn to speak up or have faith it assists them in finding their true strength and they become even stronger people. In Anderson’s Speak, Melinda discovers her true strength in choosing to protect herself from Andy Evans. When she is attacked once again by Andy in the janitor’s closet, she is given two options: to let Andy gain control of her and possibly rape her a second time, or to defend herself, despite the fear she feels. She chooses to stand up against him and gains the courage to yell “NNNOOO!!!”(194) to him. Talking to Rachel before this happened is one of the reasons she got the courage to yell. This decision she has demonstrated her true strength, her audacity.
She protects herself before she gets raped a second time and demonstrates strength does not come only physically but mentally as well.
Throughout Hillenbrand’s Unbroken, Louie Zamperini faces more difficult challenges then Melinda did. Louie was shot down over the Pacific and set an unsought record for surviving in a raft at sea for 47 days, he was captured by the Japanese and ultimately taken to one of their worst prison camps in which Louie’s survival is based on the faith his has of one day seeing his family again. With survival in mind, Louie gains the ability to retrain in a decent condition throughout his 47 day journey on the raft; allowing him to endure harsh beatings given to him by
The Bird, allowing him to maintain hope and a positive attitude during his entire imprisonment.
On the raft, their primary pastime besides deeply thinking of food, is imagining their lives once

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    leg, causing him severe pain. Brian attempts to build a fire with no matches and eventually…

    • 419 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Through his time in imprisonment he creates many friendships and alliances with the guards and the inmates, however he never gives up his belief in himself and he never looses his sense of belonging to the outside world like many of the inmates. He refuses to become institutionalized. He always believed in his innocence and believed he belonged on the “outside”.…

    • 1343 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    hardships which he must prove strong throughout to keep his family on their feet. Tom also…

    • 497 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    house to her and makes it a point to tell her if she tried escaping his…

    • 509 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    During his childhood, the son faces exposure from two very different parents. One of which believes in the preservation of life and moral values, whereas the mother believes in self-destruction and inconsideration towards everyone. Overall, the father has the most profound impact upon the son. Through their southward journey, the father and son share several successful and horrible experiences together. Throughout occasions such as narrowly escaping death from cannibals and plundering an underground bunker, the father and son have grown a strong, loving bond. Unfortunately, this developing relationship does not last forever, due to the father’s terminal illness. After his inevitable death, a stranger graciously offers salvation to the lost son. This salvation comes in the form of a loving, holy community that graciously takes the son in as their own. The 8-year-old boy, manages the unthinkable – survival. The son owes his survival entirely to his father. In a post-apocalyptic world where resources are few and far between, protecting the son from all levels of threats, so that the son can one day become self-sufficient, is nothing short of…

    • 2407 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Departure: Max bit his mother, ran away from home, and kept running until he found a boat…

    • 928 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    When answering the question does peaceful resistance to laws positively of negatively impact a free society, one word takes precedence - peaceful. Too many times we overlook that word and the result is just resistance to laws. In recent days, something that was titled peaceful demonstration turned into violent protest. The violence is often the intention of the "resistance" groups from the onset. The latest example comes from those who protested the outcome of the presidential election of Donald Trump. Their intention was violence and destruction in the name of protest. Egged on by media corporations with political leanings, these enraged individuals are given a free pass. This gives actual civil disobedience no chance to create positive change. The majority of protestors have no idea what cause they are associated with, just looking for their shot to get on television. The next "protest" must outdo the last and so on and so on. It is now commonplace to destroy property, set fires and attack innocent bystanders to get your point across.…

    • 526 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Unbroken Essay

    • 728 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Over 2,600,000 civilians and militants died in Japan alone during World War II. One survivor named Louie Zamperini experienced unimaginable horrors, and faced death daily in a POW camp in Japan. He survived by refusing to let his captors deprive him of his humanity and make him “invisible.” Louie’s life could have been very different if he had never been captured. His experiences shaped him as a person and eventually made him a better man. In the book Unbroken, Laura Hillenbrand illuminates the theme that war and conflict have profound and varied effects on different individuals.…

    • 728 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Mobilization for War

    • 667 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Herman Goering thought that no Air force or military in the world could stand up to that of the Nazi Luftwaffe. His boastful statement was made with well acclaim in that the Luftwaffe was a very powerful aerial force, but he was being narrow-minded when he made this statement against the production potential of the United States, which has time and time again has proved to be the most powerful nation in the world. Without the military production of the United States, the Allies would not have had a chance against the Germans and their powerful forces. Through many changes, the labor and production force of the U.S. changed from producing civilian goods, to producing military goods. These goods were supplied to all nations of the Allied Powers, and the United States quickly became the most important factor in World War II.…

    • 667 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Resilience In Unbroken

    • 502 Words
    • 3 Pages

    During Louie’s life, he had never failed to be resilient. Through the time that he had been struggling to survive at POW camps, with everything that the…

    • 502 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    News reports regularly report on incidents involving terrorists or crazed gunmen laying siege to hordes of innocent people. What would you do if you suddenly found yourself thrown into this situation? Would you know what actions were crucial to your survival?…

    • 702 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Theme Essay

    • 454 Words
    • 1 Page

    is given hope that it was some prisoner who was striving to obtain his freedom. This…

    • 454 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Jane Eyre Journal Entries

    • 1313 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Explanation: With the allegations she was being accused with she felt like she had nothing to lose, so she fought with no care for the consequences.…

    • 1313 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Lol

    • 564 Words
    • 2 Pages

    managed to survive because she did not wait for someone to come save her, she…

    • 564 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Speak essay

    • 1307 Words
    • 4 Pages

    First, Melinda exposes her confidence at the end of the book, unveiling the optimism once shut out by darkness. Melinda is able to look at herself in a whole new light, knowing the old Melinda would soon awaken. For instance, “I dig my fingers into the dirt and squeeze. A small, clean part of me waits to warm and burst through the surface. Some quiet Melinda girl I haven’t seen in months. That is the seed I will care for” (188,189). This demonstrates the prospect of Melinda’s confidence, as she knows she will overcome her fears. Melinda compares her determination and bravery to a seed claiming that it will soon “burst through the surface” and flourish. Melinda’s confidence is also shown when she turns her attention to the positive side of things. For instance, Melinda challenges her old friend Nicole in a tennis match and loses; although instead of being downhearted and melancholy, she recognizes that she tried hard. “Everyone else whines about their blisters. I have calluses on my hands from yard work. I’m tough enough to play and strong enough to win. Maybe I can get dad to practice with me a few times.” (170). Melinda understands that she lost the match, but instead of looking at the negative side, she escalates the confidence in herself, claiming that ‘I’m tough, I can win.’ instead of ‘I’m terrible, I’ll always lose.’ Besides this,…

    • 1307 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays

Related Topics