Significant Quotes
"He could feel the rumble of the craft’s engines tilling the air but couldn’t make out the silver skin, the sweeping ribs, the finned tail. He could see only the blackness of the space it inhabited. It was not a great presence but a great absence, a geometric ocean of darkness that seemed to swallow heaven itself." (pg.4-5)
Connects to War and Identity. The Graf Zeppelin parallels the impact and involvement from countries in WWII. The zeppelin is presented as a symbol of foreboding and even evil: although it's on a peaceful mission, it's going to visit two countries--Germany, as led by Hitler, and Japan--that will soon fight against the United States in World War II.
According to Louise, what day is Mother's Day?
September 9th "because that is the day she learned for sure that her son was coming home.
How does Part 1 of the novel impact the development of the rest of the novel?
Part 1 lays the foundation to Louie's character. His defiance, confidence, and optimism will impact his perspective and actions for the rest of the novel.
Cite at least 2 examples related to the theme of Redemption and Forgiveness.
Part 2- Shark Attack/Mac saves Louie's life as they try to inflate the raft.
Part 5-Louie's journey to recovery
When Louie, Phil and Mac were on the raft, a key factor in their survival was optimism. Louie and Phil remained optimistic while Mac was hopeless, seemingly doomed by his pessimism. Why are some people hopeful, and others not? How important is attitude and mindset in determining one’s ability to overcome hardship?
Everyone on team must answer this question without repeating the other person's thoughts or examples.
From this day forward, until victory or defeat, transfer, discharge, capture, or death took them from it, the vast Pacific would be beneath and around them. Its bottom was already littered with downed warplanes and the ghosts of lost airmen. Every day of this long and ferocious war, more would join them. (pg 70)
Connects to War and Identity and Survival and Resilience. Here Louie and his new friend, Phil, prepare for a career in the military. They're being sent to Japan, where some of the most brutal fighting of World War Two took place. Hillebrand depicts their journey across the Pacific Ocean as a dangerous trek, in which they're surrounded by death in one form or another ("the ghosts of lost airmen"). As the war goes on, we're told, more and more soldiers will be killed. The passage is important because it conveys the extent of the danger Louie is about to face. (There is a 50% chance of dying in combat or by accident.) He's dealt with adversity before, but it's not until now that he'll truly risk his life.
What was the name of the atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima?
"Little Boy"
How is Watanabe characterized throughout Part 4 and 5, if you read it?
The novel’s antagonist and the epitome of evil, Watanabe is the cruel and psychopathic prison guard who singles out Louie for emotional and physical torture. Driven by a desire to feel powerful, Watanabe derives pleasure and self-worth by using torture to dehumanize the prisoners. Watanabe is also vain and delusional, believing that that prisoners love and respect him. At the end of the war, Watanabe lacks total self-awareness and compassion, casting himself as a victim, rather than a perpetrator, of the horrors of war.
What are the different ways in which faith and belief reveal themselves in the novel?
Religious faith- Praying to God
Faith in Family- Not accepting Louie was dead
Faith in Oneself- Confidence & Survival
Lack of Faith- People became cruel and violent
While on the raft, the men lost half their body weight and were rendered mere skeletons. Yet they refused to consider cannibalism, which had not been uncommon among castaways. Would you, in the same situation, ever consider cannibalism? If it could ensure that two men survived, when otherwise all three would almost certainly perish, would it be a moral decision?
All team members must answer the question without repeating someone else's thoughts or examples.
That night, before he tried to sleep, Louie prayed. He had prayed only once before in his life, in childhood, when his mother was sick and he had been filled with a rushing fear that he would lose her. That night on the raft, in words composed in his head, never passing his lips, he pleaded for help. (pg 142)
Connects to Belief and Faith.
In this passage Hillenbrand introduces the theme of religion to the novel. Louie isn't a particularly religious person, we've already been told--but there's a side of his personality that seems willing to have faith, against all the evidence. Here, Louie is trapped on a lifeboat, desperate for food and rescue. He prays to God for help, just as he did when he was a child and feared that he might lose his mother. His motivations aren't hard to diagnose: he's frightened and, for once, helpless.
In a way, Louie's behavior here reiterates everything we already knew about his athletic prowess. Louie is an optimist through and through--when the outlook doesn't look good, he finds a way to see the bright side, believing against all reasonable evidence that everything will work out well. Thus, he chooses to have faith that he'll be rescued, praying to God for help.
47 days
Compare and contrast Louie to his mom. (Hint: Think back to the example about Halloween.)
The comparison between Louie and his brother highlights Louie’s rebellious and defiant nature. But, like Louie, Louise also defies traditional norms, rebelling against the expectations of her as a woman and mother in the 1930s. Her defiance will also prove useful when, refusing the U.S. Army’s suggestion that she give up Louie for dead, she holds onto the belief that he is alive.
When they arrived at the crash site, the men were astonished by what they saw. Two life rafts, holding the entire five-man B-25 crew, floated amid plane debris. Around them, the ocean was churning with hundreds of sharks, some of which looked twenty feet long. Knifing agitated circles in the water, the creatures seemed on the verge of overturning the rafts. (pg 96)
Connects to Survival and Resilience. Foreshadows War and Identity. In this passage, Louie's crew rescues a group of men from shark-infested waters. The men are swimming in the ocean, trying to escape the sharks, which threaten to eat them alive. Louie and his friends are shocked and terrified by the sight of so many bloodthirsty animals. The passage reiterates the presence of death and danger in Louie's life now: as a soldier, he has to contend with the dangers of the natural world, not just of the Japanese army. Next to the sharks, the sailors and their life rafts seem incredibly fragile, barely capable of withstanding the sharks' attacks. At the same time, the sharks are just following their nature--they aren't any more bloodthirsty or vicious than any other animal trying to eat. It's only humans who are capable of real cruelty--it's a human war that has brought the sailors to this conflict with nature. The passage also foreshadows some of the dangers that Louie will experience personally when he's sent adrift in the ocean.
“Anger is a justifiable and understandable reaction to being wronged, and as the soul’s first effort to reassert its worth and power, it may initially be healing. But in time, anger becomes corrosive. To live in bitterness is to be chained to the person who wounded you, your emotions and actions arising not independently, but in reaction to your abuser. Louie became so obsessed with vengeance that his life was consumed by the quest for it.” Do you agree?
All team members must answer the question without repeating someone else's thoughts or examples.
This self-respect and sense of self-worth, the innermost armament of the soul, lies at the heart of humanness; to be deprived of it is to be dehumanized, to be cleaved from, and cast below, mankind. Men subjected to dehumanizing treatment experience profound wretchedness and loneliness and find that hope is almost impossible to retain. (pg 188)
Connects to Survival and Resilience and Dignity. In his next ordeal, Louie's faith and optimism are tested even more rigorously. During his time as a prisoner of war, Louie isn't just tortured and deprived of food and water--he's humiliated and dehumanized by his Japanese captors. The Japanese soldiers force Louie to perform humiliating actions, and they laugh at him, treating him like an animal. Hillenbrand notes that Louie's dehumanization at the hands of the enemy soldiers is more damaging than his physical torture. Louie is an optimist--he can always look ahead to the future because he sees the bright side of everything. But because his captors treat him like an animal, Louie finds his optimism fading away--he begins to despise himself, falling in line with the way his guards treat him. The passage reconfirms one of the book's key ideas: psychological strength is just as or more important than physical strength for attaining success.
For every plane lost in combat, ____ planes were lost in accidents.
6
What does this quote imply about Louie and Phil?-> "For Louie and Phil, the conversations were healing, pulling them out of their suffering and setting the future before them as a concrete thing. As they imagined themselves back in the world again, they willed a happy ending onto their ordeal and made it their expectation. With these talks, they created something to live for. (pg 153)"
Back in the lifeboat, Louie, Phil, and Mac try their best to survive in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Mac is currently slipping into despair, but Louie and Phil try to keep their hopes up. The two were already friends before the accident, so they have an easy time bonding with each other, and here they try to keep up their optimism and mental acuity by quizzing each other, recalling memories, and telling stories.
One of Louie's key insights, both here and later in the book, is that adversity is mental as much as it is physical. In other words, Louie doesn't just have to deal with the challenges of having no food--he has to keep his sanity during the ordeal (by the same token, he had to focus his mind in winning the race, not just focus his body in running). Louie is a great athlete and a great human being because he understands the psychological component of danger--he has incredible willpower, which helps him survive.
Select one theme and explain how different circumstances develop it from Parts 1-4. (Minimum of 1 example per part)
War and Identity- Graf Zeppelin, Planes lost in Combat/ The Green Hornet, Japanese attack at sea, treatment of POWs at camps/Hiroshima.
Survival/Resilience- Getting into and out of trouble, turning to alcohol to forget fallen soldiers, hunting food at sea, stealing food at POW camps.
Dignity- Not reacting to punishment as a child, training to be the best at boot camp both individually and as a team, not screaming at Mac for eating all of the chocolate, humiliation of soldiers at POW camps.
“What the Bird took from Louie was his dignity; what he left behind was a pervasive sense of helplessness and worthlessness,” Hillenbrand explained. “As I researched Louie’s life, interviewing his fellow POWs and studying their memoirs and diaries, I discovered that this loss of dignity was nearly ubiquitous, leaving the men feeling defenseless and frightened in a world that had become menacing. The postwar nightmares, flashbacks, alcoholism and anxiety that were endemic among them spoke of souls in desperate fear. Watching these men struggle to overcome their trauma, I came to believe that a loss of self-worth is central to the experience of being victimized, and may be what makes its pain particularly devastating.” Do you agree?
All teammates must share their thoughts to their question without repeating someone else.
Now he was 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. Of all of the violent and vile abuses that the Bird had inflicted upon Louie, none had horrified and demoralized him as did this. If anything is going to shatter me, Louie thought, this is it. (pg 291)
Connects to Survival and Resilience, Dignity, and War and Identity.
In this passage, Louie is forced to endure an especially awful punishment at the hands of the sadistic "Bird": he’s forced to crawl on the floor of a pig sty, picking up pig feces with his bare hands. Furthermore, Louie has to eat the feces just to survive. This torture is not only disgusting and horrific, it's also entirely dehumanizing--Louie is made to act like an animal, or something even lower than an animal. The Bird is trying to break Louie’s spirit, and this kind of torture tries to get him to think of himself as a mere beast.
The passage shows Louie coming close to giving up entirely. And yet even here, at the nadir of his time in captivity, Louie maintains his sanity and his confidence (barely). The one Japanese soldier who treated him with kindness and support has inspired him to be strong. Thus, even while Louie is thinking about being “shattered,” he continues to maintain some distance from his own punishment—it’s as if he’s just closing his eyes and waiting for it to be over.
After the Olympic Games of 1940 were canceled, where do Louie work AND what did he do to mourn the loss of his dreams?
He worked at an aircraft factory as a welder.
Who is Kawamura, why is he significant, and what does he prove about survival and dignity?
Louie is finally treated with kindness and respect by one of his prison guards, a man named Kawamura. Kawamura doesn't go along with his fellow soldiers in humiliating Louie; instead, he regards Louie as a human being, and therefore worthy of kindness. Hillenbrand notes that Kawamura's kindness might have saved Louie's life, because optimism and basic dignity is a key force for survival. When people learn to respect themselves, they find new courage, which helps them succeed. Optimism can be an almost physical feeling, just as despair can cause concrete problems with a person's breathing, circulation, and general health. We've already seen evidence for such an idea, but here Hillenbrand makes her point especially clearly: psychological strength is more important than physical strength, at least for survival.
Which theme has the biggest impact within the novel? Why is it significant and how does the author develop it throughout the novel to reveal its power?
Answers may vary.
Why has most WWII literature focused on the European war, with so little attention paid to the Pacific war? (Think back to the Ted Talk about the power of a single story. What story does literature and history avoid by focusing on what took place in Europe?)
All team members must contribute at least one idea to this question.