69 pages • 2 hours read
Laura HillenbrandUnbroken
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Louie’s Body and Spirit
Louie, a gifted athlete, undergoes a dramatic physical transformation as his body adapts to the demands of his time at sea and in the POW camp. As Louie progresses from an impressive physical machine to “a dead body breathing” (179), his spirit appears to be able to maintain its strength. It is not Louie’s athletic body that gets him through the war, but his tenacious spirit. Louie cannot be emotionally nor psychologically broken by his experiences though his physical body suffers greatly.
After the war, both Louie’s body and spirit struggle when he copes with his post-traumatic stress by drinking excessively on a regular basis. Louie’s brief period of alcohol abuse ends when he reconciles with God after hearing the sermons of Billy Graham. In this situation as well, Louie’s spirit self enables his physical self to heal, leading him well into his nineties.
The Race
Louie’s decision to become a born-again Christian enables the reader to draw a parallel between his running career and his subsequent survival in World War II and the Bible passage 2 Timothy 4:7: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.”
The religious significance of the symbol of a race echoes the literal significance of races, specifically running races, to Louie. Just as Louie won by an impressive margin at a NCAA competition, in spite of the torture inflicted on him by other racers, Louie beat the odds by surviving experiences that took the lives of many other men. His performance at the Berlin Olympics proved that he was capable of great success while racing, foreshadowing other successes in his life of a different sort.
Louie’s ability to persevere in all situations, no matter how difficult or life-threatening, reflects his psychological stamina. He cultivated this stamina while training for his athletic career, but his potential for perseverance was well-established from a very young age. While in the military and a prisoner of war, Louie’s ability to finish every race, no matter the odds, has metaphorical significance as well as literal meaning.
Hunger
Hunger can be both a physical complaint and an emotional one; Louie’s experiences with hunger, both his own and that of others, reveal the significance of hunger symbolism and the kinds of eating that can satisfy hunger. On the lift raft, for example, Mac’s surreptitious consumption of the chocolate rations that were intended to sustain all three men reveals more than just Mac’s physical hunger. He consumed the chocolate while fearing for his life, revealing his hunger for safety and stability.
While imprisoned at the POW camps, Louie and his fellow prisoners suffered from extreme hunger. Their bodies starved as they struggled to live through abuses and humiliations. In these situations, the physical hunger of the men exists alongside their hunger for self-respect and dignity. Rations were limited or eliminated altogether as punishment for bad behavior; the guards recognized the importance of food on both a physical, nutritious level and a metaphysical level.
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By Laura Hillenbrand
