TOW #4 - IRB Unbroken

     With 60 million deaths and casualties in a six year period, WWII was the deadliest military conflict in history in respects to absolute terms of total deaths. In Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, the author captures the life of  WWII prisoner of war survivor Louis Zamperini and shares a powerful story of the war hero to the American public. By appealing to the emotions of readers and building credibility through relevant evidence, Hillenbrand effectively shares the compelling story of "survival, resilience, and redemption".
     Hillenbrand purposely tells a war story through a personal account of a veteran because it paints a clearer picture of the inhumanities of war. After being taken to the Japanese prisoner of war camp, Zamperini suffered in various ways such as being "condemned to crawl through the filth of a pig’s sty, picking up feces with his bare hands and cramming handfuls of the animal’s feed into his mouth to save himself from starving to death" (Hillenbrand 291). Through a biography of a WWII prisoner of war survivor, Americans can truly understand the harsh conditions that soldiers faced in combat. Rather than a textbook highlighting only key ideas and events, the individual narrative shares an emotional aspect of war and the adversities that cannot be told through concrete facts. Through the account of Zamperini's life, Hillenbrand appeals to the emotions of Americans and reveals war in a eye-opening perspective.
     In addition to pathos, Hillenbrand also builds credibility throughout the book to still show that this personal account truly happened. To put the war into perspective for the readers, the author includes notable facts stating, "In the Army Air Forces, or AAF, there were 52,651 stateside aircraft accident over the course of the war, killing 14,903 personnel" (Hillenbrand 66). By integrating a personal story with statistical evidence, Hillenbrand appeals to her audience through ethos in the midst of pathos and reminds Americans that this personal account of WWII truly occurred. Despite the story largely being written in a narrative style, the author incorporates statistics and relevant background information put the story into its historical context. Overall, Laura Hillenbrand writes an engaging personal war story of Louis Zamperini through the combination of both pathos and ethos.