Viktor Frankl’s story in Man’s Search for Meaning was one story that allowed me to question my own struggles in comparison to those of others. Day to day for me, my struggles simply revolve around my complaints of seemingly excessive homework or the never-ending list of what I need to do next. But for many around me, though I may not always realize it, their struggles extend far beyond my realm of comprehension or imagination. For Frankl, his struggles were unmatched, yet similarly confronted him with pressure and tension as many people see in their lives today. In his story of life during and after living in a concentration camp during Nazi Germany, Frankl highlights the ceaseless suffering he faced during that time; the prisoners were not
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl is filled to the brim with rhetorical devices from all three sections of the text. Particularly in his section about logotherapy, Frankl’s practice to find an individual’s meaning of life, he explores the three main meanings of life: accomplishment, love, and suffering. This area uses a plethora of comparison, such as parallelism and metaphor. Recurring themes are used to draw back to Frankl’s three life meanings, like word repetition and alliteration. Frankl’s use of rhetorical devices allows his audience to focus on their individual possibilities and incorporate his ideology into society.
Frankl optimistic attitude helps him achieve happiness by accepting his circumstances. He argues that if life has meaning there must be a corresponding meaning to suffering. A man acquires deeper meaning in his life after he accepts his fate. He provides a scenario where most people despise their lives when faced with tough situations. Frankl also argues that when a person’s destiny involves suffering, he must accept it as his only task in life. Such a person has to acknowledge that in suffering one is alone and opportunities will come depending on the way he weighs his burden.
There are 3 phases to prison camp life. These were admission, camp life, and liberation. The first phase is when a prisoner gets admitted to a labor or death camp and it is characterized by initial shock. Frankl was admitted to Auschwitz and when he arrived via train car he was horrified because Auschwitz stood for gas chambers, crematoriums, and massacres. Frankl then talks about the “delusion of reprieve” where one things that he will be spared right before his execution. Initially when the trains came to Auschwitz, a special group of prisoners were the receiving line that would make those on the train feel better about arriving. “Nearly everyone in our
In the first half of the book Frankl attempts to answer the question “How is an average prisoner affected by everyday life in the concentration camps?” Frankl uses this question and demonstrates examples of other prisoners who continued to find hope even in such horrific conditions. Furthermore, Frankl clarifies how finding a meaning in a tragedy is of great
In Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor E. Frankl recounts the exceptionally individual story of his experience as a detainee in an inhumane imprisonment amid the Holocaust. He displays this story as a paper in which he shares his contentions and examination as a specialist and therapist and also a previous detainee. This paper will audit Frankl's story and additionally his principle contentions, and will assess the nature of Frankl's written work and spotlight on any regions of shortcoming inside of the story.
Although each individual person has their own unique responses to crises, there are often commonalities in behavior following certain events. On October 1, 2015, a man came onto the campus of my town’s community college, killed nine people, and injured many more. The entire community was stricken with grief; however, it was even worse for those who knew the victims. A close friend of mine named Daniel lost one of his best friends in the shooting, and as he was grieving, his behavior began to reflect the symptoms of the third stage concentration camp prisoners experienced as described in Viktor E. Frankl’s autobiography Man’s Search for Meaning.
Victor Frankl was a Jewish writer, psychiatrist, and husband before he was imprisoned in Auschwitz. There his strength, dignity, and family were taken away,however he never lost his will to live. He credits this to his ability to find meaning in all that was happening. Frankl writes of his own experiences and those in which he observed in the concentration camps. He starts from the arrival on train to their long awaited, unexpected departure into a world the former prisoners would never view the same.
Imagine being arrested, forced out of your home, transported to a jail-like camp, and seeing people die all around you while wondering if you would be next - all due to your race, religion, or sexuality. This situation seems unrealistic for the 21st century, but sadly, just one century prior, this circumstance was reality for millions of people, including Viktor Frankl, who tells the story of his Holocaust experience. Between the years of 1933 and 1945, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi soldiers captured anyone who he viewed as a lesser race. Common targets included Gypsies, Poles, Soviet prisoners of war, Afro-Germans, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals, disabled people, and the most common, Jews. About two-thirds (six million) of European Jews were killed during the Holocaust, more than one million of these were children (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum). Frankl turned his experiences and findings into an extremely powerful novel, Man’s Search for Meaning. He tells his story of living in a concentration camp, while also introducing and explaining his psychological theory of logotherapy.
He shares his story like many holocaust survivors had, but he chooses to focus on others more often than himself when he is making a point, an example of this is when he focuses on his friend’s F--- hopes which slowly die away as time begins to pass and nothing is fulfilled for him; and so with his hopes, the man also dies. F---’s hope was to see freedom come, and when it did not his body gave way to Typhus. His experiences are in sections; he places them in perspective by (1) arrival to the camps, (2) the degradation of live in the camps, and (3) then finally upon being released or liberated from the camps. Frankl’s and his fellow inmate’s struggles illuminated a path that was chosen and sought, beyond their immediate incapacities. “The opposite of humanity is brutality, the failure to acknowledge the humanity of one’s fellow man, the failure to be sensitive to his needs, to his situation. Brutality is often due to a failure of imagination as well as to the tendency to treat a person as a generality, to regard a person as an average man,” relevance of this quote is in regard to the Kapos, fellow inmates who disregard another person’s life for their own benefit. Upon arriving to the camps, they lose liberty. Once adapted to the life in the camps, they begin a search (this is the moment where community is sought) “Man achieves fullness of being in fellowship, in care for others. He expands his
One can find meaning and motive not through materialistic ways, but through mystical ways, such as faith, hope, and love. Frankl was able to search for meaning during his time at the concentration camp through work, love, and
A country singer named Randy Travis once sang in “Three Wooden Crosses”, “It’s not what you take when you leave this world behind you, it’s what you leave behind you when you go.” This verse gives meaning to my life and defines what I will do when I am gone. A man by the name of Viktor Frankl writes the book, Man’s Search for Meaning. In this novel, Frankl is at one of the dreadful concentration camps during the Holocaust, trying to search for his meaning of life. What gives one meaning to his or her life? One might think they have no purpose in this world however, that is not true. He or she must find the people or concepts that make them happy or give significance to their lives. The meaning of one’s life can be interpreted
He goes on to describe three different psychological phases that prisoners of the death camps go through. He provides vivid illustrations of the three stages through his personal recollections and through those of the others he knew. Various challenges were displayed through the three stages: after admittance into the camps, life during imprisonment, and the period following liberation. After admittance many prisoners lost all hope, but there were some who held onto small slivers of it. “In psychiatry there is a certain condition known as “delusion of reprieve.” The condemned man, immediately before his execution, gets the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last minute. We too, clung to shreds of hope and believed to the last moment that it would not be so bad “(Frankl 10). During imprisonment, Frankl shows how he remained hopeful. While telling his accounts, the tone is not one of vengefulness. One of the most touching recollection of his memories were the ones he had about his wife. Those fond memories gave him the will to live. The light that he needed in those dark times were the times he daydreamed and seen his wife. He dreamed of
Viktor Frankl’s, Man’s Search for Meaning, is a collection of his experiences in the concentration camps of Auschwitz, Dachau, and Mausthausen. His book speaks a story upon survival and the thought process to survive. Viktor Emil Frankl was born on March 26, 1905 in Vienna, Austria. He received his MD and PhD degrees from the University of Vienna where he studied psychiatry and neurology, while focusing on the areas of suicide and depression. In 1492, Frankl and his family were arrested and sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Over the span of three years, Frankl was transported between four different camps.
Viktor E. Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning is a book about pain, anguish, suffering, but that's not all that it is about; it is also about dealing with these problems as it talks about how the writer was able to survive the holocaust. The first part of the book describes the many problems that the prisoners had to face at the hands of the Germans, and how they had to avoid death, from being sent instantly to the gas chambers to succumbing to the extreme cold weather. This part describes 'what' happened to the prisoners. The second part of the book focuses on 'how' the prisoners were able to survive. This is the inspirational part of the book that shows that if someone facing such precarious conditions as being in a Nazi concentration camp
Frankl endured much suffering during his time in the concentration camp. All of his possessions were taken away, including his manuscript in which he recorded all of his life's work. He went through rough manual labor, marching through freezing temperatures, and little or no