A Hero's Journey By John Frankl

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

Today was my first lesson in humility. Some of the elder Monks had reprimanded me for my selfish thoughts and words. This was my first transgression and thus I was taught my lesson behind closed doors.

By biological logic, we human beings will face death sooner or later in our life and death has its very own ways to approach us - a sudden deadly strike, a critical sickness, a tragic accident, a prolonged endurance of brutal treatment, or just an aging biological end. To deal with the prospect of death come different passive or active reactions; some may be scared and anxious to see death, some try to run away from it, and some by their own choice make death come faster. But Viktor Frankl, through his work Man’s Search for Meaning, and Bryan Doyle; in his essay “His Last Game” show us choices to confront the death, bring it to our deepest feelings, meaningful satisfaction. To me, the spirit of the prisoners at deadly concentration camps, Frankl’s Logotherapy theory of “. . . striving to find a meaning in one’s life is the primary motivational force in man.” (99), as well as the calmness of Doyle’s brother on his last ride, like an awaken bell, remind us of how precious life is, how we should find the significance in every act of living, determine to live a meaningful life at any circumstances; hence, when death comes, we can accept it without anxiety nor regrets.

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.

John Updike’s attitude concerning the difficulties about writing a novel are compared in his poem, Marching Through a Novel, to the actions of the military. He especially utilizes vivid imagery, martial diction, and metaphors to convey his message of the troubles faces as a writer to which he then compare with the actions of the military.

zack wants to admit he wasn’t AWARE of an essay ( though he’s sure their classes differ, anyway ) but instead, he takes a SYMPATHETIC route. an arm slings around jason’s shoulders, lips pressed into a thin line. he’s pondering. what would their wall trapped adviser say in this moment ? “ isn’t it better to have it done earlier than to never have done it ? vigilance is key. ” he tries in his zordon voice, but he’s missing the foreboding attribute. “ c’mon, dude, at least ranger business won’t be interruptin’ you when ya doin’ it. good vibes and all that shit. take a nap here. ”

He spent time with some typhus patients in a hut who were experiencing mild symptoms. He witnessed a patient die and watched without any emotional upset; this scene was very common and repeated over and over. The act of apathy increased within each of the inmates day by day, they slowly became insensitive to their daily beatings and death of close members. He mentions that, “the corpses near me, covered in lice, did not bother me. Only the steps of passing guards could rouse my dreams.” (51). I cannot even conceptualize my reaction to witnessing a death; I am personally very sensitive, compassionate and empathic towards others. The idea of witnessing something so horrendous happen and me not being able to do anything to prevent it crushes my soul. I naturally just want to alleviate people from their

In part one of "A Man's Search for Meaning", Dr Frankl gives a glimpse in the world of the holocaust through the eyes of a prisoner in a Jewish concentration camp. He explains the three psychological reactions that all prisoners experienced in one way or another. The first stage, shock. The prisoners saw many alarming sights when riding in on the train: “long stretches of several rows of barbed wire fences; water towers; searchlights; and long columns of ragged human figures.” They didn’t know how to feel in this situation and their imaginations started running wild with different scenarios of what was going to happen in there. Frankl discloses a psychiatric condition known as "delusion of reprieve", it is described as "The condemned man, immediately

Logotherapy is the thought that each human is motivated by a “will to meaning” or finding his or her meaning in life. This idea was created by Viktor Frankl (Unknown). After reading Dr. Stephan Schulenberg’s articles "Logotherapy for Clinical Practice" and "On the Measurement of Meaning,” I got a better understanding of what logotherapy can actually do. Knowing that Frankl spent time in a concentration camp during World War II, I can easily see how this was a comforting coping mechanism for him (Frankl). Frankl gives three ways that people can find their meaning in life. These three topics come down to: love, work, and suffering. He describes it as encountering something or someone, for example, in “Man’s Search for Meaning,” he was always able to think of his wife through the miserable conditions in the camp. Once again, in the same book, his “work” was the book he was writing. He kept little scraps of paper to write his thoughts down and

He was eventually discovered, when, one Easter day, God advised a priest who lived about four miles from there, to take food to His servant, who was starving. The priest searched in the hills and finally found the solitary, and they took their meal together. Some shepherds also knew of his retreat, and soon the fame of this hermit's sanctity began to spread. The demon persecuted him, but to no avail; when a temptation of the flesh assailed him, he rolled in a clump of thorns and nettles, and came out of it covered with blood but sound in

As the men “had to become accustomed…” to their new situation, “tortures of other most painful emotions”made continuing to go on most difficult. Worries about their families, their futures, and their likely deaths became all-consuming for some. The shock and horror the men experienced upon admittance to the camps gradually gave way to apathy at the reality of their situation. “Everything that was not connected with the immediate task of keeping oneself and one’s closest friends alive lost its value.” Again, Frankl does not judge, condemn, or criticize this response, having experienced it himself, defending it as a “necessary mechanism of self-defense.” Frankl also doesn’t limit this phenomenon to the prisoners themselves, explaining that “the feelings of the majority of the guards had been dulled by the years in which, in ever increasing doses, they had witnessed the brutal methods of the camp.”

In this article Man’s Searching for Meaning, Victor Frankl focuses on finding meaning through suffering. In logotherapy, it is represented as “tragic triad”, which consists of aspects of human existence which can be circumscribed by pain, guilt, and death. Each element of the tragic triad provides an incentive that can produce a great amount of unhappiness. However, logotherapy does not regard humans as animals prone to given incentive response mentality. It is the belief in human emotions based on tragic experiences to see that there's meaning in life. With that said, he says “ presupposes that life is potentially meaningful under any conditions, even those which are most miserable” p. 162. For Frankl the only true way to happiness is through

Frankl comes up with a theory known as Logo therapy. It comes from the Greek word Logos that means “meaning.” He argues that the primary motivation in a human being is not from pleasure rather it is from discovery, pursuit, and fulfillment of a certain purpose unique to every human being. The purpose of logo therapy is to facilitate a person’s ability to find his life’s meaning. The author argues that logo therapy creates awareness regarding what a patient longs for in his life. According to Frankl, the satisfaction of drives and instincts does not guarantee happiness. Finding meaning in one’s life brings forth happiness. He gives the story of an American diplomat who sought his services while he had an office in Vienna. The diplomat had spent five years acquiring psychoanalytical

In his works on the Pursuit of Happiness, he is seen to stumble across the will and the meaning that is attributed to life. This phase is aimed at unlocking and bringing to light the meaning that is attached to what life stands for and the will behind its existence. Logo therapy was developed and brought to being through events and actions of deepened sufferings, sadness and tensions of depressions scattered all over. This in turn results to Frank working deeper in all the theory behind the existence of such emotions and feelings, and aims to come up with ways to eradicate such feelings all in the aspect and aim of finding happiness.

Mental reactions to the most exceedingly bad encounters are never predetermined by any given circumstance, no matter how solid or powerless it is. Meaning of life comes from inside a person despite the existing despair. Individual duty is continuously the perfect way for a person to pick up meaning. And this is considered likely if the individual does not yield to negative mind-set of others and be genuine to him or herself. Frankl states that it is conceivable to be habitually uncovered to passing and hopelessness of Auschwitz, however still get a way of finding meaning in this despondency. Indeed, while passing