TOW #12 - IRB

For the second marking period, I chose to read Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. It is a non-fiction book based off of a true story about Louis Zamperini. He was a track star who was drafted into the United States Air Force during World War II. Unbroken narrates his life from his track achievements in his earlier years to his imprisonment at a Japanese execution camp. After crash landing in the Pacific Ocean because of a mechanical error in his bomber, he and only two other crew members, Russell Allen "Phil" Phillips and Francis "Mac" McNamara, survived to spend the next one and a half months on a life raft. Although Mac passed away on thirty-third day, Phil and Louis manage to survive two more weeks before being captured by a Japanese ship. Ironically, they were very well fed and treated on their transport to an concentration camp, Kwajarein, which was also known as "Execution Island". Although I only read about halfway through the book, there have been several rhetorical devices that Hillenbrand uses to narrate the story. She uses several symbols in order to foreshadow the events to come. At the beginning of the story in 1929, Louis sees a German dirigible named the Graf Zepplin. As it loomed over him, he stood in shock and awe, yet thought to himself that he never wanted to deal with planes, as they scared him. This is both foreshadowing and symbolizing the war that was to come: shocking and scary. Also, while Louis, Phil, and Mac were stranded in the ocean, they catch an albatross and uses its meat to catch fish. Having read "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner", a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, last year in English class, I remembered that killing an albatross caused bad luck, which certainly happened in Unbroken. Louis and Phil were sent to a concentration camp where they were under the watch of "The Bird", a nickname given to the unforgiving warden. So far, I thoroughly enjoy reading Unbroken, and Hillenbrand does an excellent job at using symbols to foreshadow upcoming events.