Unbroken By Watanabe Character Analysis

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Doug Coupland a Canadian novelist and artist, had at one time said “One of the cruelest things you can do to another person is pretend you care about them more than you really do.” In the nonfiction book Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand, Mutsuhiro Watanabe also known as “The Bird” demonstrates cruelty to a great extent. Watanabe would treat the POWs nicely and out of nowhere he would start beating them to the point where they would be on the brink of death. Perhaps out of loneliness The Bird was incited to abuse and harass his victims in order to fill that void with the attention he consequently desired. He pretended to care to get cared for in return and the thing that sets him off could possibly be the fact that he finally realizes that he is not actually cared for in exchange for his lousy kindness.

When first introduced, the Bird is obsessed with Louie Zamperini:“From the moment that Watanabe locked eyes

To gain a sense of authority over his victims. An maybe he also likes to feel the consequences of the power that comes during the beatings and the destructive psychological damage to the POWs that he inflicts: “ ‘He did enjoy hurting POWs,’ wrote Hatto ‘he was satisfying his sexual desire by hurting them’ ” (Hillenbrand 242). His desire to hurt them and destroy them was not only to physically injure them, it actually pleased him sexually, which is twisted in every way imaginable. He gets so messed up and insane because he wanted to scar these men not only mentally but physically as well. The acts that the Bird did to the POWs shows that he wanted to haunt them in their dreams and drive them to the point of insanity: “Watanabe combined beatings with acts meant to batter men’s psych’s” (243). By saying this, Hillenbrand gives readers a picture of a sadistic man who received some type of enjoyment by terrifying the