69 pages • 2 hours read
Laura HillenbrandUnbroken
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2010A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 36-39Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 5
Chapter 36 Summary: “The Body on the Mountain”
The story shifts to follow Mutsuhiro Watanabe and his new identity as a laborer for a farmer. He heard news reports on the radio of other Japanese war criminals being captured. In his diary, he “mulled over his behavior...but also expressed no remorse” (355). Eventually, the Bird told the farmer who he was, and the farmer encouraged him to keep silent.
While accompanying the farmer’s son on an errand, Watanabe longed to visit home. He ventured into Tokyo and narrowly missed being captured by the manhunt issued for him. He returned to the village where the farmer had tried to arrange a marriage for him. He declined, telling the woman “he had a burden which would make her unhappy” (360).
In the fall of 1946, a story circulated, and Watanabe was described as having been found dead alongside a woman; suicide was suspected.
Chapter 37 Summary: “Twisted Ropes”
Louie attempted and failed at several business ventures he created to raise money so that he could exact revenge on Watanabe: “He’d gone from drinking because he wanted it to drinking because he needed it” (363). His behavior towards Cynthia grew increasingly violent; once, he attempted to choke her in his sleep in a state of confusion after a recurring nightmare involving his strangling the Bird. When his obsession with killing the Bird intensified, Cynthia left and took their baby, Cissy, with her.
Chapter 38 Summary: “A Beckoning Whistle”
Japanese detectives were not thoroughly convinced that the body found at the top of the mountain was Mutsuhiro Watanabe. The search for him resumed. The Bird was reported to have had a brief meeting with his mother during which he told her that he would meet with her again in two years “if [he was still] alive” (369).
Cynthia returned to Louie, but divorce was in the near future. Billy Graham was speaking in Los Angeles, and, according to people who had seen him speak, he was drawing huge crowds. Cynthia went by herself the first night and was so moved by Graham’s message, she tried to convince Louie that he needed to hear Graham speak as well. Louie refused. Cynthia persuaded Louie to go with her to see Graham another night.
Graham’s sermon centered on the theme that God judges everyone and bases His judgment on thoughts and actions. Upon hearing this message, Louie became defensive, repeating to himself that he was a good person. Despite this effort to see himself in a positive light, he knew that he was a changed man: “Somewhere under his anger, there was a lurking, nameless uneasiness, the shudder of sharks rasping their backs along the bottom of the raft” (373). He grabbed Cynthia’s arm and left.
After much coaxing, Louie agreed hear Graham speak again the next night. The words that Graham spoke caused Louie to feel cornered and panicky. They brought him back to his experiences on the life raft and the promises that he made to God: “If you will save me, I will serve you forever” (375). At this moment, Louie experienced his last flashback, and “he felt supremely alive” (375). He went home, poured out all of his alcohol, picked up his Bible, and “believed...he was a new creation” (376).
Chapter 39 Summary: “Daybreak”
Louie became a Christian speaker. In the fall of 1950, he visited the Sugamo Prison to visit some of the Japanese guards who had imprisoned him. He recognized a few faces: Jimmie Sasaki, Kono, and the Quack. Louie asked about the Bird, but he was told that the Bird had never been found; the Bird never returned to see his mother. When Louie thought of the Bird, he viewed him as a deeply troubled and lost individual with no possible future as a decent human being. Once he realized that he was feeling compassion for the Bird, Louie realized that “the war was over” for him (379).
Chapters 36-39 Analysis
In the final section of the book, Hillenbrand discusses Louie’s “return to life.” This section begins with a description of the Bird’s life after the war; at this time, Louie was at his lowest point, emotionally and psychologically. Hillenbrand titles Chapter 37 with the metaphorical image of “Twisted Ropes” which likens his alcoholism and his obsession with violence and the murder of the Bird to Louie’s experience after the Green Hornet crashed. After the crash, the twisted lines of the plane trapped him underwater, nearly drowning him. After the war, Louie’s vengeful hatred towards the Bird caused him to feel as if he were metaphorically drowning in his own psychological torment and hatred.
The resolution, redemption, and return to life for Louie Zamperini occurred during the evenings he hears Billy Graham speak; though Louie lost his wife and child, he gained a renewed strength in his faith in God. The theme of faith and redemption return in this final section of the book, and by weaving Graham’s spiritual metaphors with Louie’s experiences on the lifeboat, Hillenbrand reveals Louie’s awareness of the divine intervention that had been ever-present in his life. Hillenbrand compares his initial anger at the darkness that lurked inside of him to the sharks swimming under the lifeboat when he was lost at sea for over forty days. When Graham spoke to the crowd, where Louie was sitting, he called out to the “drowning man” among them. This event reminded Louie of the miracles he had experienced and of the times he should have died but was inexplicably saved. Louie became suddenly grateful of God’s “infinitely, broad, benevolent hands” (374) in his life. From that moment on, Louie embraced Christianity and a fuller understanding of himself and his self-worth. Christianity provided Louie the strength to forgive the Bird and to perceive him as “a lost person” instead of as a tormentor who has power of him. Finally, at this point in Louie’s life, the war truly ended.
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