Imagery
Throughout the book "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand, she uses intense imagery in order to help the reader further connect with Louie and understand the incredible journeys and situations that he endured. Hillenbrand makes the reader feel like they are right in the moment with Louie Zamperini. While reading the book the reader can experience and overcome the trials that Louie is going through alongside him. The use of imagery creates a connection between the reader and Louie, the reader knows the thoughts running through his head while he is being faced with such difficult situations. The use of imagery helps the book's overall purpose of describing Louie's unbelievable life story by telling the story the way that Louie remembered it all happening, including his moments of joy, anger, despair and fear.
"Then he felt the water still on him, the heavy dropping weight of the plane around him...He could see nothing. His Mae West was uninflated, but its buoyancy was pulling him into the ceiling of the plane. The air was gone from his lungs, and he was now gulping reflexively, swallowing salt water. He tasted blood, gasoline, and oil. He was drowning." (Page 126)
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" Over Long Beach, they sank back into the rain and landed. There, bursting from the army cars, were their mother and father, and Sylvia and Virginia. The moment the plane stopped, Louie jumped down, ran to his sobbing mother and folded himself around her." (Page 336) |
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"Ahead, the Finns scuffed and sidled into Lash, roughing him up. Lash held his ground. But on the eighth lap, Salminen cocked his elbow and rammed it into Lash's chest. Lash folded abruptly, in evident pain...Louie saw none of it. He passed the deflated Lash, but it meant little to him. He was tired...He found himself thinking of Pete, and of something that he had said as they had sat on their bed years earlier: A lifetime of glory is worth a moment of pain. Louie thought: Let go" (Pages 34-35)
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"And then, all at once, the ocean erupted. There was a deafening noise, and the rafts began hopping and shuddering under the cast-aways. The gunners were firing at them. Louie, Phil and Mac clawed for the raft walls and threw themselves overboard. They swam under the rafts and huddled there, watching bullets tear through the rafts and cut bright slits in the water around them. Then the firing stopped." (Pages 161-162)
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“HILLENBRAND HAS WRITTEN MUCH MORE THAN A ‘GOOD READ.’ SHE HAS WRITTEN A WORK OF ART… The selfless conjunction of writer and story is only one element of the narrative power of Hillenbrand’s gripping book. Another is her prose. In short, straightforward and plainly true sentences … she writes so clearly that the reader is there too.” — The Oregonian
By: Bailie Cook