Library Director’s Notebook
January, 2013
One of my resolutions this year is to get out of my comfort zone with reading material. If left to my own devices, I tend to gravitate towards literary fiction a la Margaret Atwood or quality historical fiction by writers like Andrea Barrett , mysteries of all kinds, , and non-fiction books about health, history, gardening and nature study.
There is certainly no dearth of choices in these categories of reading! Still, I want to shake my reading style up a little bit, and I think I managed to do so with the book I just read, Unbroken by Laura Hllenbrand.
Hillenbrand is best known for her vigorous telling of the story of Seabiscuit, the remarkable thoroughbred racehorse who overcame the odds and captured the hearts of millions during the Depression. To Unbroken, Hillenbrand brings the same spirit of unabashed wonder, willingness to dig deeply, and an almost poetic eye for vivid, and at times scathing detail.
This is a story told in distinctive parts of one man’s extraordinary life. Louis Zamperini earned his place in the history books as a record breaking Olympic runner. But that is the least exciting part of his life. As a child, before he discovered the joy and rewards of running, Louis could only described as a terror, a young, delinquent boy on a fast course to personal disaster. It is hard to know where these behaviors sprang from: Louis seems to have been raised in a close, loving family and he had as a role model hia older brother Pete , loved and admired by all. Well, perhaps sibling rivalry was part of the problem!
Urged on by his brother, young Louie trained with fierce pride and determination to break running records held by older, more experienced, and better trained athletes. His special hopes were pinned on the 1940 Olympics, but a certain event called World War II put an end to those dreams.
Shot down in his fighter plane in May, 1943 Louis and two other airmen endured unbelievable odds, adrift at sea without food or fresh water, tormented by sun and storm, and unnerved continually by circling sharks, for 47 days . Yet their eventual capture by the Japanese and the subsequent years of torture, starvation, and humiliation made those days adrift seem more like daydreams than nightmares.
Reading this book is often painful. It is deeply disturbing to read of the brutality that man can inflict on his fellow man. Many Allied prisoners died of starvation, beatings, exposure to bad weather, and disease in the Japanese prison camps. Countless more died of despair and humiliation, which can break a human being just as completely as lack of food or raging disease.
Louis Zamperini miraculously survived, but so many of his friends and comrades did not. He returned at the end of the war to the U.S.A. to loud acclaim and many honors, yet even his family did not know about the parts of his mind and spirit that were savaged and broken, perhaps never to heal.
For all the horrors described in this book, there is a kernel of hopefulness and of deep respect for what human beings can endure through their strength of spirit and their shared humanity. Louis Zamperini deserves this astounding retelling of his life; yet so many others lived as honorably and endured as much, perhaps with only an unmarked grave to note their passing. The great thing about Unbroken is that it never fails to recognize the sacrifices of many lesser or even barely known soldiers who gave everything they had and more than they could have imagined. Their legacy is truly the unbroken chain that unites us all.
