Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Tow #24: Unbroken section one

I started reading my IRB, Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. This book starts with giving a detailed account of Louis Zamperini and goes through his whole childhood. Louis was a kid who started going down the wrong path, but his brother, Pete, caught onto this and reversed his life for him. Pete knew that Louis had a lot of potential in him, so he set really high goals for him. Louis became a track star, and soon he joined the United States Air Force.

I think the purpose of this first section of the book was for the author to introduce to the reader Louis Zamperini, a World War II hero and show how his childhood changed him and shaped him into the hero that he became. It made the audience, war veterans, or anyone interested in reading a biography of a true war hero, understand better Louis's life and how he got into the Air Force.

However, in reading more about the author, the real purpose that Hillenbrand wrote this book was to show a parallel between Zamperini and herself. Hillenbrand suffers from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and when she was diagnosed, it was one of the hardest things she ever had to go through. Doing every day activities such as walking up and down the stairs, or even walking to the mailbox and back, Hillenbrand found herself extremely tired and needed to rest. At this point, she was just about ready to give up. She then heard the story of Seabiscuit and wrote a book on it because of how inspired she was. Unbroken reflects the same idea of survival, resilience, and redemption. In writing this book, Zamperini becomes an inspiration for Hillenbrand, giving her an example of faith. Her writing is a coping strategy for her disease.

The first section of the book uses many rhetorical devices, such as vivid description. Hillenbrand does a good job describing Louis Zamperini and his childhood, providing events in his life, and giving a good description of the people and influences in his life. This is really effective in the sense that this really helps the reader understand and picture Louis and his life. The first section also includes many pictures of Louis and his family. This is really effective because even though the author provides many descriptors, these descriptors are made more powerful when the author provides real life photographs of Louis and his family. This really helps the reader understand that Louis is really and this is really empowering because this is not just some made up story, but a true story of a real hero whose pictures are provided in the novel.

This book was written in the context of remembering war heroes and I personally think that so far from what I am reading, Laura Hillenbrand has done an amazing job introducing Louis, really giving the readers a sense of who he was, writing a great chronology of his life events starting from birth. I also think that this book's diction is really empowering and the pictures in the book because they really show the virtues that Louis poses of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption.


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