Unbroken Reflection

Max Yon
Dr. Lemp
English 411- Final Essay
11/24/2014
Unbroken: Wars Reflection In the novel Unbroken, written by Laura Hillenbrand, Louis Silvie “Louie” Zamperini is depicted as a courageous and resilient American World War II prisoner of war survivor. Human warfare can bring out the worst in people through sacrifice and suffering. To be a prisoner of war, a soldier endures the most unimaginable brutality that war brings. During World War II, Second Lieutenant Louie Zamperini experienced horrific suffering after he survived a plane crash, 47 days at seas without food or water, numerous shark attacks, and torturous prisoner of war camps where he was forced to do daunting tasks that tested his body to the very limit. Although, Louie didn’t
just survive; he conquered the challenges that would be enough to break some of the strongest men. Louie became known as one of the bravest and most courageous war hero’s during World War II. For Louie, the war did not end after being rescued. He confronted what, many war veterans continue to face, is known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. From Conrad in Sparta, to Jimmy Cross in The Things They Carried, to Louie Zamperini, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder affected these soldiers to the point where their lives and reality would never be the same. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the tribulations Louie endured on his heroic odyssey and use that to reflect on how it affected not only his post war life, but how war in general forces soldiers to carry heavy physical and emotional burdens with them for the rest of their lives. As quoted by John Stuart Mill, “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things.” For Louie, his experience with war was one of devastating proportions, but the post war challenges he faced were just as overwhelming. How Louie demonstrates the concentration and mental toughness to overcome those challenges is the key to surviving prisoner of war camps, plane crashes, and the greatest battle of them all, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Louie’s experiences that made him overcome the obstacles later on in his life started from when he was just a rebellious, untamable young boy growing up in Torrance, California. As a kid, Louie fought every curb of his freedom and felt that every rule set before him was a tempting invitation to defiance. Before high school, Louie was the town troublemaker who used his cunningness for petty thefts. His rebellious personality as a kid also led to countless beatings by local bullies. It wasn’t until high school that his energy was harnessed by his older brother’s suggestion that he try track and this led to him being one of the fastest runners in America. Louie’s childhood “shaped who he would be in manhood” and when it was decided that he would be “carried into war, his resilient optimism would define him” (Hillenbrand 7). Louie used the passion he had for running to fuel his way into college at USC. There he smashed NCAA records and tried out for the Olympics in 1936. Louie was the type of person who learned to channel his energy and focus to a specific vision. Whatever Louie envisioned, he ultimately attained through training and belief. Making the Olympic team in 1936, Louie ran the 5,000 meter race and finished in eighth place in Berlin. It wouldn’t be long until the militant fascism in Berlin would soon alter his life completely. Similar to Tim O’Brien in “On the Rainy River”, Louie was an accomplished young man that became an Olympic athlete who had aspirations to continue competing even after the 1936 Olympics and after he graduated from USC. The thing that differs from O’Brien and Louie is that Louie embraced the opportunity to fight for his nation when the Second World War erupted in 1939, while O’Brien had pre-war doubts of whether or not the Vietnam War was worth fighting in. Louie’s training he had on the track and his “teenage delinquency” was what conditioned him for war but it would ultimately be the lessons he learned at USC that would save him (Segal). O’Brien’s dreams of being a Harvard student were replaced with fear. He felt as if he was “too good for this war” (O’Brien 41). Louie, on the other hand, used his driven personality and focused his energy in being not only a reliable soldier, but a hero. Louie took with him the idea that he learned at USC that mind over matter would be what would ensure Louie’s survival in his upcoming tribulations. Louie was commissioned as a second lieutenant as a bombardier and began flying missions over the Pacific. In May 1943, during a reconnaissance mission, his B-24 went down over the Pacific, but he survived the crash with two other crew members, Phil and Mac. Louie had been through races that required his toughness. He had overcome battles in his childhood that required him to be brave to get back up on his feet. However, Louie’s challenges were going to be tested on a completely new level as he began his journey on a raft with two other crew members. In his youth, Louie’s fight and resourcefulness were the reason for his troubles, but now they were his ace in the hole for beating back death and coming out alive. Set upon that raft in the open water, Louie made sure to always have a purpose and a vision for the future, to keep his sanity and keep hope alive. Louie had learned at USC “to think of the mind as a muscle that would atrophy if left idle. Louie was determined that no matter what happened to their bodies, their minds would stay under their control” (Hillenbrand 145). Louie and Phil engaged in daily brain workouts where they talked about life before the crash, and what life would be like when (never if) they got home. For Louie and Phil “the conversations were healing, pulling them out of their suffering and setting the future before them as a concrete thing” (Hillenbrand 146). They made a purpose of their situation and set survival as an expectation, not just a hope. They created a reason to live. Phil and Louie were able to shape their fate for survival, while Mac slipped away from hope partly because he rarely participated in the discussions. Mac’s pessimistic view on the situation “seemed to paralyze him… and it was he who faded the most” (Hillenbrand 148). Whether it was Louie and Phil’s optimism or Mac’s hopelessness, it was an idea that was becoming self-fulfilling for them. Mac’s inability to change his focus from death to life can be attributed to the reason for his passing. This very simple idea of training the mind similar to training the body is a common theme on what motivated Louie to conquer the pressures he faced in his life. He and Phil were able to survive on the raft for 47 days until they got picked up by Japanese forces, and were sent to multiple prisoner of war camps. As much as Louie suffered on the raft, he once stated that it was far preferable to what awaited him after the Japanese captured him. Already in a weakened and emaciated state from starvation on the raft, Louie was physically beaten and mentally tortured through confinement and threats to be executed. He was later transferred from Kwajalein to Ofuna Prisoner of War Camp, which was notoriously known for its violations of the Geneva Convention’s terms. This is where Louie met his greatest nemesis, Mutsuhiro Watanabe. Watanabe especially made an effort to target Louie in ways in which Louie was beaten daily, starved, humiliated, ill without proper care, and exposed to extreme temperatures. The punishment that Louie endured was extraordinarily stressful on his mind and body. In one example, Watanabe ordered Louie to hold an extremely heavy wooden beam over his head. The beam was heavy enough to barely be lifted by the deteriorated Louie and if he were to lower the beam at any point, a guard would strike him in the face with a gun. No one, even Watanabe, expected Louie to hold the beam for more than a few minutes but Louie’s focus to not let Watanabe defeat him, allowed Louie to hold the beam for 37 minutes before Watanabe’s patience gave in and the guard struck him anyway. Laura Hillenbrand states that “dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen” (Hillenbrand 183). She continues to say “The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man 's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it” (Hillenbrand 183). Louie’s demonstration of strength, focus, and defiance gave him the power to hold the beam longer than what his body was probably capable of doing at the time. Louie’s childhood toughness and ability to control and train his subconscious mind into believing in a purpose and vision, gave Louie the tools he needed to overcome the physical stress placed on his body. These moments of physical and mental triumph showed that Louie was capable of overcoming anything in the presence of disadvantage.
Louie displayed remarkable attributes in his thoughts and actions for how he was able to keep pushing forward through his war experiences. However, Louie faced a bigger demon when he returned from the POW camp that had brought him so much physical and emotional stress. Even after surviving some of the most excruciating burdens, the years after the war proved more tumultuous than he had anticipated. Spiraling downwards, Louie spent each night haunted by Watanabe’s beatings in his dreams. Louie tried to forget his harrowing experiences, but inside him the scars and trauma of war festered. The celebratory drinking turned into severe alcoholism where he drank to ignore the past. Louie couldn’t discover what his purpose in life was to be ever since he returned from war. He became obsessed with the idea of returning to Japan to kill his former tormentor. Rather than center his energy on tackling the depression he faced like he was able to do through his most trying challenges, Louie was consumed with the fantasy of finding Watanabe and killing him. Louie’s value system became blurred and he felt like he had no purpose other than to bring justice to his tormenter personally. Laura Hillenbrand offers a very deep and truthful explanation on the paradox on revenge. Laura states “The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who
have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when their tormentors suffer” (Hillenbrand 366). Louie believed that he would only be restored to his depressed-free self when Watanabe had shared Louie’s suffering. The idea clung in Louie’s mind like a virus and consumed him to the point where he couldn’t function unless he acted upon this belief. “A once singularly hopeful man now believed that his hope lay in murder” (Hillenbrand 366). Louie’s next challenge was to conquer the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Similar to Conrad in Sparta, Louie carried with him the negative weight from the world of war. In Sparta, Conrad finds himself struggling to make peace with what he calls the “upper world” while he battles shaking free from the dark “lower world” that occupies his mind (Robinson 374). What Conrad was asked to do damaged him so significantly that he reached a point where he felt taking his life was the only way to escape the mental mess he was in. Conrad couldn’t find his purpose in the civilian world because he felt lost forever in the world of war. His inability to forget and move on relates to Louie’s inability to believe that there was a purpose in his life other than seeking revenge on Watanabe. A man struggling against an inescapable past is faced with the torturer of his own mind. The only way for these two men to conquer the demon inside their own mind would be to take control of their mind, find a purpose to live, and seek help. In Louie’s case, he had conquered the challenges that war presented to him by exercising his mind and not letting his spirit ever to be broken. “The best way to meet any challenge is to be prepared for it” (Louie Zamperini). Louie didn’t know it at the time of his depression, but he was prepared to defeat PTSD all along, all he had to do was keep a promise and find his purpose again. Back on the raft, Louie and his crewmembers once went for 6 days without water. The three men were knocking on deaths doors until Louie prayed feverishly to God, pledging that he would dedicate his life to him if only it would rain. Louie continued this prayer several more times during his journey, but when the moment came that he was rescued, he ignored the past and forgot to thank anyone for his survival, even God. His vow was forgotten. Louie tried to embrace survival back home by marrying a beautiful bride in Cynthia Applewhite. Shortly after the two were married, their relationship disintegrated and his wife sought for a divorce. Louie was almost numb to the revolving events in his new life because he was so consumed in his past and finding a way to end the pain by inflicting pain. In a last ditch effort to save their marriage, Cynthia begged Louie to attend a Billy Graham revival meeting that she had been going to. After countless efforts to convince him to attend, Louie finally engaged in the meeting and right then and there the memories that he tried to bury with alcohol and vengefulness reappeared in his mind. Louie was transfixed by Graham’s message of forgiveness and fell to his knees asking for forgiveness from God for not upholding his end of the promise. Laura wrote the experience as “At that moment, something shifted sweetly inside of him. It was forgiveness, beautiful and effortless and complete. For Louie Zamperini, the war was over” (Hillenbrand 379). According to Unbroken, forty years after the war, more than 85% of former POWs suffered from PTSD (Hillenbrand 347). According to Department of Veterans Affairs ' statistics in 2004, 25, 000 World War II veterans were still receiving disability compensation for PTSD-related symptoms such as bad dreams, irritability, and flashbacks. The underlying similarity among these prisoners of PTSD is that they lose hope and lose their purpose and vision in life. Another big problem for many people is they fail to become aware of their condition and the treatment options that they possess and that are available to them. For example, Jerry Yellin was one of the 16 million people to serve in WWII. After his experiences in the war, he returned home to realize he was not able to find any contentment, any reason to succeed, or any connection to anyone that had meaning or value. He suffered from flashbacks and a feeling of hopelessness. Jerry took on a technique that would change his life forever. He learned how to mediate and train the mind as if it were a muscle. He took control of his mind and realized that the conscious decisions you make every day regarding what to focus on plays a crucial role in shaping the outcome of your life (Yellin). The common theme that this paper addresses is that veterans are going to face trauma and fear after they return home from a world of war. However, the way to counter the mental war after the physical war is to understand that there is a purpose to life, seek help, and learn to change your ways of thinking in order to avoid the prisons of PTSD. For Louie Zamperini, war was able to damage him in every physical way possible. Through every beating and physical burden he endured, Louie was able to keep hold of his dignity and survive the war. After receiving the message from Billy Graham, Louie turned his life to God and forgave his Japanese captors, even Watanabe. His religious conversion helped him find purpose in life again and allowed him to overcome his emotional scars. Louie and countless other survivors of PTSD show true strengths of human character in the way they are able to overcome their personal battle. For Louie, “When he thought of his history, what resonated with him now was not all that he had suffered but the divine love that he believed had intervened to save him” (Hillenbrand 376). His remarkable resilience as a POW and a PTSD survivor has made him an inspiration to millions. If you are going to be anything in life, you must be able to commit to a goal. From soldiers who suffer from PTSD to people enduring any type of daily challenge, you must reach deep within yourself to see if you are willing to make the sacrifices it takes to overcome those problems. The optimism and vision that Louie had on the life raft is what allowed him to overcome 47 days at sea. The mental toughness and conscious effort to not give in to Watanabe’s sadism allowed Louie to take his body beyond reasonable limits. Finally, the discovery of God’s unfailing love and forgiveness allowed Louie to overcome PTSD and reestablish his purpose in life. Louie Zamperini is a man unbroken due to his control over his mind, body, and spirit. For anybody faced with a challenge, the power is within you and within the help of God to overcome any obstacle. The life of Louie Zamperini is not only an inspiration, but is a guide for anyone to learn the power to face any challenge, and not only to survive that challenge, but to conquer it.

Works Cited
Epstein, Jack.
"U.S. Wars and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder." SFGate. N.p., 22 June 2005. Web. 21 Nov. 2014.
Hillenbrand, Laura. Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. New York: Random House, 2010. Print.
O 'Brien, Tim. The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction. New York: Broadway, 1998. Print.
Robinson, Roxana. Sparta. New York: Sarah Crichton /Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013. Print.
Segal, Elizabeth. "Summer 2003 - Trojan Family Magazine." Summer 2003 - Trojan Family Magazine. USC News, June 2003. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.
Yellin, Jerry. "WWII Veteran Writes Book about Overcoming PTSD." Transcendental Meditation. TM, 6 Nov. 2010. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.

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