How does Louie cope with his anxiety about dying?

When he is captured and tortured by the Japanese guards, Louie's spirit of survival will not let him break. He refuses to allow the worst guards to beat him. Despite the fact that he is brutally beaten, degraded and dehumanized by The Bird, Japanes Guard Watanabe, his spirit remains unbroken. To accomplish this, he again draws on the basic tenets of his character, in rule-breaking and secret defiance. He keeps a diary, which is a punishable offence, writing in it in secret and hiding it under the floor. He communicates with fellow prisoners using morse code and hand signals as well as an elaborate verbal code that they have created in order to keep their dignity. Throughout the book, it is made clear that dignity is the most important thing that enables the men to survive. ALthough their bodies are broken, their spirits are not, because they refuse to allow their dignity to be taken away.