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His original plane was shot up, so he was forced to fly a notoriously unreliable plane. The plane crashed. Lie and Phil, the pilot, survived for 48 days on a raft and washed ashore on a Japanese torture island. They were then transferred to multiple POP camps, where Lie was terrified, beaten, and tortured by a guard called “The Bird”. The story ended with a troubling fact: Only one percent of allied Pops died while in captivity in Germany, while that rate was over forty percent in Japan. Less than half a percent of Japanese Pops died while in American captivity.
The author has a tendency to include detail that would not be included in more factual non-fiction books. Such quotes include this one: “In his barracks one day, a man dragged in from slave work, looking spent. He lay down, asked to be awakened for dinner, and went still. At chowtime, Lie kicked his foot. The man didn’t move. He was dead. He was young, like everyone else, and hadn’t even looked sick. ” This gives you more of an intimate look into the POP camp brutality than straight facts and statistics. Nonfiction books do not usually include information that cannot be proved by more than one source.
Quotes like this give you a more intimate look into the lives of war prisoners. It makes you feel the despair of Lie and his POP mates. The book is written in a way where you feel that you share the main characters emotions. “His mind began to derail. While sitting at a bar, he heard a sudden loud sound, perhaps a car backfiring. Before he knew it, he was on the ground, cringing, as the bar patrons stared. ” Reading the book, this makes you start to cringe too because you know this reaction is based on he highly detailed beatings from the bird, or other prison guards.
This book would be hard to relate to or connect too emotionally if the author had not included Louse’s feelings and strong emotion. The author wrote the book in the third person point of view, but it seems like the narrator is telling the story as if he/she experienced the plot himself. Unbroken is third person omniscient, but is mostly limited to Louse’s point of view. “The buckle rammed into Louse’s left temple and ear. Lie felt as if he had been shot in the head. His legs began to liquefy, and he went down. The room spun. This quote shows how Laura can make 3rd person read like first person.
Quotes like this attribute to the fact that the book reads like a novel, as most novels are written in the first person point of view. Hildebrand includes facts to enrich the reader while also captivating the reader with the plot. “For every allied soldier killed, four were captured; for every 1 20 Japanese soldiers killed, one was captured. ” Facts and details like this appeared all around the book. In my opinion, this really helped me understand the situations in the book better. This was one of the multiple throng points in Hildebrand style.
Pieces of information scattered about the book not only made it a good read, but an insight into World War Two history. The author, Laura Hildebrand has a phenomenal style, one that blends fact with a good plot and exceptional detail. She kept the book from being too repetitive, and supplied a very good book. The author balanced fact, detail, and suspense to create a captivating book. I think Unbroken is so good that Ms. Wade should read it. (I cannot put page numbers for quotes because there is no way to find page numbers On a kindle)