Theme in My Book

The theme in my book would be war. I mean that in southern Sudan there was a revolution and both sides are fighting and destroying people's homes and trying to get people to join their side and acting as if they were in charge by wrecking people's stores. People who didn't join the Sudanese army were attempted to be killed by the SSLA(Southern Sudan Liberation Army), and people who didn't join were attempted to be killed by the Sudanese army. Also people who decided to stay neutral in the war were killed by both factions. If I was there I would feel that my whole country had turned on me, there was no way to not be attempted to be killed. People had to run away from their burning homes, then be shot at, just for choosing not to join either faction. There was no more regard for any people of Southern Sudan which a revolution, would be fighting for the people. So the notion that either side would be killing un-involved people goes against any reason for why either side is fighting. I think the characters in the story feel betrayed by their country because the war started fighting for people and now both factions are killing innocent civilians, even children. They're country is killing them "for them". War is horrible, and that I believe is the theme in my book        What is the What

Responses on responses

I chose Stella and Dante as the responses I wanted to write about.

In Dante's I liked the way he displayed the detail of the story explaining exactly who was there and why, I understood what was happening in the story without actually reading, so when that happens that means that that is a good summary.I also liked how he thoroughly explained who each character is and what they were doing, which is another thing he did well. Overall I thought Dante did a good job.

In Stella's I liked the way she explained the emotions she felt about the book and the emotions the characters felt throughout the story. I feel that that added to the summary quite a bit because you can tell a lot about a character by the way they react to problems, which I liked knowing about how the characters felt, it made the summary feel more complete in my opinion. Overall I think Stella also did a good job 

Book Response

Over the summer, I read a book called "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand.
   It is a true story about a man named Louis Zamperini. It starts out when Louis is a young boy. He was really mischievous and stole stuff from people and was just in general, a bad kid. Later in his life in high school, he discovers that he loves to run. He joins the track team at college and keeps progressively getting better and better at running. He runs a qualifying race for the Olympics and makes the Olympic team. The Olympics are held in Berlin, at that time was ruled by Adolf Hitler, and Germany was Nazi ruled.
        Louis was then drafted into the Air Corps as a bombardier. He met his crew and became good friends with the pilot Phillip. There was one type of aircraft that no one wanted to be the crew of, it was the B-24 bomber, Louis's crew was assigned to that type of aircraft. The crew kept flying missions, because the war was still raging, until one mission where Louis's plane "The Superman" was shot by an enemy plane through the fuel tank and only just made it to a friendly base."The Superman" was not going to fly again, as it was filled with holes bigger than a man's head.
          Louis's crew was assigned a mission to go on a search mission to find a plane that had gone down. Louis's crew was then assigned a new plane named "The Green Hornet", they knew this plane to be unsafe and requested a different plane, but were declined because the plane passed inspection. The crew took off in the new plane and flew for a while looking for the plane that went down. Two of the engines in their plane broke and they started going down, Mac grabs the provisions bag and braces for impact, Cupernell grabs the life raft, and Louis braces for impact. They hit the water and the plane rips apart, Louis tangled in some metal wire is dragged down with it, he falls unconscious but wakes up again to find himself untangled he swims to the surface, he sees a raft and swims toward it, he makes it on, while Phillip and mac help him up, they are the only survivors.
          They notice the provisions bag is gone, so they have no food or water except whats on the raft, a bottle of water for each of them, and one chocolate bar, that was to be one piece to each survivor twice a day. They all go to sleep but when Louis and Phillip wake up, all the chocolate is gone, and Louis could tell by Mac's face that he had eaten all the chocolate in a panic. They see another raft from their plane and tie it on to their raft, by now sharks are circling the raft waiting for a survivor to get in the water.
          The survivors hear a plane and then see it, they pour dye into the water and shoot a flare into the air, but the plane didn't see it and kept on flying. Now more than a month in the raft they see another plane, and do the same, pour dye and shoot a flare. The plane turns around and starts flying towards them, they think they have been rescued, until the plane starts shooting at them and fires a torpedo into the water. Every bullet misses all of the survivors, but their raft has started to sink because it is riddled with bullet holes, Louis gets the raft patching kit and has to get in the water to patch all the holes. The sharks come after him and he starts hitting them with his foot, and wards them off with enough time to get back on the raft. Mac eventually dies on the raft from lacking the will to live.
         Eventually they drift to an island, but it turns out to be a Japanese island and Louis and Phil are taken into captivity to a POW camp called Ofuna. There were other POWS there with them and they endured beatings daily from guards and were served little food. Eventually Louis was transferred to a different camp called Omori, where Louis met the meanest man he ever knew, the POWS referred to him as "The Bird". The bird especially like to beat Louis whenever possible, because Louis was a famous Olympic runner. International POW laws were regularly broken, by the guards at Omori. The bird was transferred to a different cam to run. Louis liked the new leader a lot more than the bird.
       Louis got transferred again, to a new camp called Naoetsu, the very same camp the bird was leading. Again Louis go beat daily. The war was coming to an end, and a kill all POW date was set, as the date was nearing the POWS had set a plan to kill the bird. Then the guards let the POWS go wash in the river, but then a plane flew over the POWS heads and beeped out Morse code, saying the war was over, the Allies had won. The plane dropped care packages with food and supplies in them. The guards had left the camp knowing the war was over, the POWS stayed waiting for rescue. They waited and waited, eventually some POWS left and walked to a train station and got on a train and rode it to the main town where American Red Cross people were waiting. They were rescued.


   I believe the book was really good and was called unbroken because Louis never gave up. On the raft Louis managed to push through it and make it to an island. He endured three POW camps that involved malnutrition and daily beatings that the guards were doing just for fun. On one of the camps Louis was told to race a Japanese man and lose, Louis raced him and won, he knew that he would get beaten for it, but did it to show he was not broken.
  After all Louis went through he was still unbroken.

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