Unbroken, by Lauren Hillenbrand

Lives don't often provide the satisfying arc we appreciate in fiction - Unbroken does. The first third is an adventure, the middle half is sheer torment, and the end is redemptive.

In 1936 Louie Zamperini was an Olympic distance-runner, drafted before he could fulfill his dream of winning the 1500 meters in 1940. He served in the Army Air Corps in the Pacific theater in WWII, escaped the wreckage when his plane crashed in the ocean, and spent over 40 days in a raft, living by ingenuity and luck amid sharks, on what meager food and water they could capture from sea and sky, only to land emaciated on a Japanese-occupied island where he and his surviving crew member were taken prisoner. He spent the next two horrific years interned first in a secret interrogation camp then in two notorious POW camps where he endured unimaginable torments at the hands of cruel men.  

The rebuilding of Japan into an ally against the communist countries of Asia required the US to turn a blind eye to Japanese wartime abuses, so it is a revelation for anyone younger than the generation who fought them, to read about the deliberate starvation, ghastly medical experiments and calculated barbarities that claimed the lives of many POWs and twisted the post-war existence of the rest. From our comfortable distance of hindsight we decry the use of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but this story bolsters the contention of members of the war generation, that use of this shocking new weapon was the only thing that prevented a full-scale invasion of Japan, to end that war.

During the castaway section, when one of the ever-present circling sharks leaps from the water attempting to grip "Zamp" in its maw, we feel a thrill - what an adventure, what a feat of survival. But when after many days in their small raft, starving, the men are spotted by a plane (rescue! at last!) then that plane strafes them, passes, and returns to strafe again, the reader feels jolted by the world's injustice. And that's only the beginning, the first step into their long hell.

Incarceration is a terrible ordeal, gripping and appalling, and Hillenbrand tells it vividly - the men's starvation, illness and thirst, the small measures of defiance that bring on added punishments but keep their wills alive, the whole twisted world of prison camp commanders and staff in which the POWs' rations are sold off on the black market while the dregs of the military wield absolute control. These men's experience is more Holocaust than The Great Escape.

But we, like Zamperini, do finally achieve peace. Barbarity wasn't invented in the wars being fought now - it is as old as human altercation. This book is as powerful an argument in favor of diplomacy and peace, as you could find. War is not a heroic enterprise, War is Hell. We do well to remember that when we clamor for vengeance, for matching destruction by "our enemies" with our own.

Lord of the Flies

Fred and I worked with a Boy Scout troop for close to 15 years, and he used to pull out his copy of William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies by way of explaining to the dads of the 11-year-olds what they could expect from a pack of teenage boys.

Standout theater director Peter Brooks filmed the book in 1963 - in black and white, with a group of English schoolboys. Updated from the original shipwreck, the boys are marooned by a plane crash. Nevertheless, the story is the same: how easily the veneer of civilization rubs away to reveal the savage.

At the start, Ralph and the boy we'll only know as Piggy promote rules and fairness, but already we recognize a boy, Jack, who itches to be in control and soon finds ways to attract a following. Ralph, with his insistence on allowing anyone to speak while holding the conch shell, and emphasizing the importance of using a fire to signal rescuers, represents civilization itself. Piggy, nearsighted, asthmatic and chubby, represents physical weakness - but his limitations make him kind to the younger boys - he looks after them, tells them stories, comforts them. Jack represents savage remorselessness, favoring those boys who accept his authority and using fear to control the rest.

There is also a Beast. When the camera finally gives us a clear look at a dead paratrooper, we understand it doesn't matter that this apparition is human and dead - the boys are afraid of an external threat. Guarding against the Beast gives them purpose and community, but it also drives them to extremity. And they forget what Ralph tries again and again to remind them: their first duty is to signal for help - that is, to remember the civilization they have left, to maintain loyalty to it, to keep themselves in a state such that they can return to it.

Fire, killing the pigs, blood, discarding their clothes in favor of body paint and masks - these elements mark the group's descent. Ralph's signal fire is a cry for help, but the bonfires that incite the others to bloodlust are its opposite. To someone who worked with boys for many years, this was all so familiar: pyromania, struggles for dominance, scapegoating, the animal just beneath the surface - but always there were boys willing to help the younger and weaker in their midst, to tolerate difference, to uphold (at least some of) the aims of civilization. The savage cannot be removed from within us - the best we can do is to give that wildness forms of expression that allow our humanity to flourish.