Ever thought of reading a book about an Olympian’s unexpected journey during World War 2? Me neither, but that was until I came upon the book Unbroken on just that. For some of the ideas shown in the book, here is a page from my notebook on the story Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand (it also has something from class at the top, don’t mind that):
So in this page, you can see, below the sentences with corrections and stuff (the MUG), some possible themes and central ideas for Unbroken. Now, for some context, Unbroken is a literary non fiction story about an Italian immigrant named Louie Zamperini, who becomes an Olympic runner, joins the army (air corps), and then crashes, winding up on a raft on the Pacific. A lot of this happening during World War 2. On the page, I have 2 themes and a central idea, along with some parts of the book to show it. The possible themes I put, as shown, include never giving up, “…lifetime of glory…worth a moment of pain”, and that’s it. I also thought of a possible central idea too, which was that the effects of World War 2 were widespread, interrupting and ending the lives of many. These were my starting ideas for the book, and we’ll soon see how my ideas progressed and how I found more evidence of them.
SPOILER WARNING! Past this part, you will see some spoilers, okay? If you are planning or wanting to read the book, then you might want to stop here. Nothing too bad though, just a little bit of stuff that happened later.
This is a second notebook page I have that has my planning for a town hall debate. In it, I have evidence that prisoners of war should give up their dignity to survive, along with some evidence. This was of course for the book, and can show some more ideas and evidence, even though this seems to be the opposite of the theme earlier on never giving up. On this page, though, it has evidence that though captured (this happened later in the book), Louie still tried to survive, by getting water in a very painful way (scalding water), which took away some of his dignity in the process. So this page, as written on a sticky note I left at the top, can actually support the theme of never giving up, which can further show the development of my ideas.
On this page, I learned how I could identify multiple descriptive words to find out the message and mood of the story. In it, I found some descriptive words in Unbroken, most of which were negative and about terrible conditions and the war. Some of these include words such as execution, exhaustion, charred cities, death chambers, and more. I used these words to connect back to that main idea on war’s effects before, since these negative words described the conditions of prisoners and citizens in Japan, which was in war during the time. This was used to further back up my central idea and to give me more confidence in it. This of which can also show my ideas developing.
This fourth and final notebook page I picked has me learning about rereading and what you could get from it, like some context from important events. Using this, I went back into the book and saw a few specific names and searched them up to see their context and what they meant for the story. For example, me searching up the Nanjing Massacre (emphasis on “Massacre”) showed me how brutal and crazy some the Japanese army was at the time showed me how hard it must’ve been for Louie to be captured by them, yet he kept on trying. This can connect to the theme, never giving up, which by now, was what I picked to be what I thought to be the theme of this book. It also connected to the central idea on the effects of war, since the massacre involved the killing of lots of civilians and innocent people. So that’s how I ended up with my theme and central idea you’re going to see soon in my summary.
So overall, the book Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand, is about an Italian immigrant becoming an Olympics runner, part of the army air corps during World War 2, being stranded on a raft after crashing, and having his physical and mental capabilities tested throughout the journey that followed. A theme in the book that showed to be present throughout was to never give up, this of which, Louie showed a lot of. A central idea on the situation at the time was that the effects of war were widespread, interrupting and ending the lives of many, these effects seen in the book to be making their way into Louie’s life as an Olympian. Stranded on a raft during World War 2, will he make it back home? Or will he join the countless souls lost in the process of the second great war? Read the book to find out.