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Dignity
Themes and Colors
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Unbroken, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The cycles of wrongdoing and redemption that lie at the heart of the book illustrate how one can always atone for the crimes and sins of the past. At the beginning of the book, Louie is a juvenile delinquent, committing petty crimes, terrorizing the neighbors with pranks, and beating up other boys. Louie redeemed himself in the eyes of his community when he turns his energy to running and ends up competing in the Olympics, becoming the pride of his hometown. Likewise, Francis “Mac” McNamara selfishly endangered his crewmates by eating all of the rations, but redeemed himself by tirelessly fending off sharks from attacking Louie and Phil.
Though the book portrays everyone as having the potential for redemption, some characters miss out on the spiritual rewards of finding redemption. For example, Mutsuhiro “the Bird” Watanabe committed the much graver crime of torturing POWs but never sought redemption for his wrongdoing. If this story were fictional, we might expect the author to conclude the book with the Bird getting what’s coming to him. But, in reality, the Bird didn’t suffer any physical consequences for his actions. The Bird, however, does miss out on the inner fulfillment and serenity of finding redemption and making amends for past wrongs.
The book ends with Hillenbrand identifying forgiveness as the most powerful resource for achieving redemption. For Louie to recover from the traumas of war and rebuild his familial and marital relationships, he had to let go of the anger he had for Watanabe. Once he forgave his former captor, Louie found the inner peace that had eluded him in the years after the war.
Related Themes from Other Texts
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Redemption and Forgiveness ThemeTracker
The ThemeTracker below shows where, and to what degree, the theme of Redemption and Forgiveness appears in each chapter of Unbroken. Click or tap on any chapter to read its Summary & Analysis.
How often theme appears:
chapter length:
Chapter
Preface
Chapter 1
1
Chapter 2
2
Chapter 3
3
Chapter 4
4
Chapter 5
5
Chapter 6
6
Chapter 7
7.
Chapter 8
8
Chapter 9
9
Chapter 10
10
Chapter 11
11
Chapter 12
12
Chapter 13
13
Chapter 14
14
Chapter 15
15
Chapter 16
16
Chapter 17
17
Chapter 18
18
Chapter 19
19
Chapter 20
20
Chapter 21
21
Chapter 22
22
Chapter 23
23
Chapter 24
24
Chapter 25
25
Chapter 26
26
Chapter 27
27
Chapter 28
28
Chapter 29
29
Chapter 30
30
Chapter 31
31
Chapter 32
32
Chapter 33
33
Chapter 34
34
Chapter 35
35
Chapter 36
36
Chapter 37
37
Chapter 38
38
Chapter 39
39
Epilogue
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Redemption and Forgiveness Quotes in Unbroken
Below you will find the important quotes in Unbroken related to the theme of Redemption and Forgiveness.
Chapter 3 Quotes
Once his hometown’s resident archvillain, Louie was now a superstar, and Torrance forgave him everything. When he trained, people lined the track fence, calling out, “Come on, Iron Man!” The sports pages of the Los Angeles Times and Examiner were striped with stories on the prodigy, whom the Times called the “Torrance Tempest” and practically everyone else called the “Torrance Tornado.”
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As Louie becomes a more impressive athlete, he also becomes a more popular figure in his own hometown. Previously, Louie was demonized for being an Italian. As he grows up, though, the townspeople are forced to acknowledge his greatness--they give him their respect because he earns it.The passage is a good example of how many immigrants in the Untied States won respect for themselves through hard work and model behavior. At the same time that Louie was becoming a sensation, Frank Sinatra was paving a way for Italians in show business, another good example of the same process. It's unfair, Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia.
Chapter 4 Quotes
Hitler said something in German. An interpreter translated. “Ah, you’re the boy with the fast finish.”
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In this passage Louie, having just run the fastest final lap of a race in history, meets Adolf Hitler. Hitler praises Louie for his excellent performance. The scene is so strange that a fiction writer wouldn't dare to dream it up: but it really happened. Hillenbrand notes the irony here: Louis is shaking hands with Hitler, the man who started the war in which Louie would one day fight, on the other side.Thus, the passage foreshadows some of the tragedies of the second part of the book. Louie is basically just an innocent kid for now, but we the readers Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati.
Chapter 35 Quotes
For these men, the central struggle of postwar life was to restore their dignity and find a way to see the world as something other than menacing blackness. There was no one right way to peace; every man had to find his own path, according to his own history. Some succeeded. For others, the war would never really end.
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In the final third of the book, Hillenbrand changes her focus from war and athleticism to psychology. The book has been psychological all along, of course—we’ve seen what’s going on in Louie’s mind while he’s running or surviving the lifeboat—but now, Louie’s mind becomes the true “battleground.” As Hillenbrand says here, many soldiers returned from World War Two without ever really recovering their old lives: the experience of so much bloodshed and trauma was too much for them to bear. Each soldier had suffered in a different way—as a result, there was no easy fix for the trauma of warfare.In Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequunt
Louie had no idea what had become of the Bird, but he felt sure that if he could get back to Japan, he could hunt him down. This would be his emphatic reply to the Bird’s unremitting effort to extinguish his humanity: I am still a man. He could conceive of no other way to save himself. Louie had found a quest to replace his lost Olympics. He was going to kill the Bird.
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In this passage, Hillenbrand shows us how low Louie has sunk after coming home from World War Two. Louie endured incredibly harsh conditions in his POW camp—most of it at the hands of a Japanese soldier nicknamed “The Bird." The result is that Louie, despite having survived the war, feels a continued hatred for the Bird. He’s been so traumatized by his violent torture that he thinks the only solution is more violence. Thus, Louie plans to return to Japan and kill his old tormenter. He feels helpless and lost in America, and feels that he can only take meaningly Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitat
Chapter 39 Quotes
In Sugamo Prison, as he was told of Watanabe’s fate, all Louie saw was a lost person, a life now beyond redemption. He felt something that he had never felt for his captor before. With a shiver of amazement, he realized that it was compassion. At that moment, something shifted sweetly inside him. It was forgiveness, beautiful and effortless and complete. For Louie Zamperini, the war was over.
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Louie was unbroken during the war because he faced the terrible traumas of the war, of the Japanese camps, and of the Bird with a refusal to give in or give up. He faced all these obstacles as enemies to be beaten, and he beat them. And yet after the war he found that the skills that allowed him to beat those obstacles -- rage, refusal to give in -- were essentially eating him alive. He survived the war; it did not break him physically. But it broke him emotionally.As this quote shows, though, through religion Louie finds a way Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Voluptas aut occaecati. Accusantium recusandae voluptates. Explicabo minus tempore. Nostrum dolor asperiores. Ut aliquam officiis. Unde enim nesciunt. Commodi necessitatibus voluptas. Accusamus eaque omnis. Velit eaque error. Possimus corrupti soluta. Qui aut a. Rerum voluptas debitis. Voluptatem accusantium est. Mollitia eaque ipsa. Perf
