Without any exaggeration or platitude, I can definitely say that Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl is the most challenging book I’ve ever read at Somers High School. The book begins as an autobiographical recount of the immense human suffering the author encountered in the Nazi concentration camps, particularly the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau camp. Frankl offers his personal reflections, interspersed between anecdotes from the camp about men at their lowest moments. The horror of the camps is undeniable, but despite his tragic stories of hopelessness and anguish among, there’s an odd feeling of emotional subversion and insult when he uses collective pronouns to describe his personal convictions. It’s difficult to articulate and obviously I don’t mean to insult a man who survived arguably one of the greatest tests of human endurance ever presented, but his reliance on this is one of the issues with the book. The structure of the book has Mr. Frankl take you through his roughly chronological account of his time in …show more content…
I personally found the book tough to digest, as often it comes across as Viktor E. Frankl asserting his beliefs as facts; telling not showing the audience how to act. Despite my criticisms and the unpleasant gut feeling the book gave me, there is enough in the book for any reader to relate to. There are countless memorable passages and quotes that may inspire some people to persevere “the sudden loss of hope and courage can have a deadly effect” (Frankl 97). I struggle to empathize and understand Frankl’s frame of reference and consequently his logotherapy method from the admittedly limited perspective of a high school student Yet, to invoke Frankl, it’s every human being’s right to interpret the world by his own “inner value” which being “anchored in higher, more spiritual things” in turn “cannot be shaken” (Frankl
'He who has a why to live for can bear any how.' The words of Nietzsche begin to explain Frankl's tone throughout his book. Dr. Frankl uses his experiences in different Nazi concentration camps to explain his discovery of logotherapy. This discovery takes us back to World War II and the extreme suffering that took place in the Nazi concentration camps and outlines a detailed analysis of the prisoners psyche. An experience we gain from the first-hand memoirs of Dr. Frankl.
An author’s form of word usage and manipulation provides stories their feeling, tone, and pace while simultaneously creating a reader’s suspension of belief. Elie Wiesel in his book Night tells us of the year he spent in concentration camps during the Holocaust. Like many people have said and proven true, a lot of things can happen in a year making it almost impossible to retell every experience down to a tee; with this information in mind Wiesel writes of the moments that stuck with him, and would possibly with readers.
Greater than any war, plague, or catastrophe and it’s potential damage to human life is beyond calculation, the feeling of dehumanization is a feeling beyond description. Elie Wiesel a Jew Holocaust survivor from Sighet, Transylvania writes a memoir Night. In his memoir he writes about his own experiences in 1944 during the holocaust. Throughout this story Elie goes through lots of challenges that ultimately challenge his faith as a human. In resemblance, Jakob Blankitny a Jew from Maków Mazowiecki, Poland writes his take on his experiences in 1944 throughout the holocaust and how he and his family are treated by the Nazis and degraded as humans. In dire circumstances, these texts argue that dissolving one into a primitive with savage, animal characteristics are necessary for survival under inhumane conditions.
There are people crowded, shoulder to shoulder, expecting a shower and to feel water raining down their bodies. Sighs of relief turn into screams of terror as innocent people are gasping for their last breaths of air inside of the gas chamber. This was a daily occurrence for Jewish and other people involved in the Holocaust. This was just one horrific event of many that had happened to women, men and children. Some of the survivors have used their voice to speak out about their own background during their time spent in Auschwitz and other concentration camps. Elie Wiesel, author of the book Night, is one of the many who did so. Wiesel talks about his personal experience and shares his feelings, thoughts and emotions that he went through with others during the Holocaust.
The terrors of the Holocaust are unimaginably destructive as described in the book Night by Elie Wiesel. The story of his experience about the Holocaust is one nightmare of a story to hear, about a trek from one’s hometown to an unknown camp of suffering is a journey of pain that none shall forget. Hope and optimism vanished while denial and disbelief changed focus during Wiesel’s journey through Europe. A passionate relationship gradually formed between the father and the son as the story continued. The book Night genuinely demonstrates how the Holocaust can alter one's spirits and relations.
Everyone experiences emotional and physiological obstacles in their life. However, these obstacles are incomparable to the magnitude of the obstacles the prisoners of the Holocaust faced every day. In his memoir, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, illustrates the horrors of the concentration camps and their mental tool. Over the course of Night, Wiesel demonstrates, that exposure to an uncaring, hostile world leads to destruction of faith and identity.
At first glance, Night, by Eliezer Wiesel does not seem to be an example of deep or emotionally complex literature. It is a tiny book, one hundred pages at the most with a lot of dialogue and short choppy sentences. But in this memoir, Wiesel strings along the events that took him through the Holocaust until they form one of the most riveting, shocking, and grimly realistic tales ever told of history’s most famous horror story. In Night, Wiesel reveals the intense impact that concentration camps had on his life, not through grisly details but in correlation with his lost faith in God and the human conscience.
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
These strong survivors pose as teachers and role models by revealing strengths, weaknesses and survival techniques. Wiesel and Ten Boom survive against the odds, but not without physical and emotional scars.
Elie Wiesel’s short memoir Night recounts his experience surviving the concentration camps during the Holocaust. In the third chapter of the book, he focuses on describing what it was like to arrive at the first concentration camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and the process the men had to go through to transform from men into prisoners. In addition to lying about his age and occupation, Wiesel lost his hair, his clothing, his mother and sisters, his name, and most importantly, his faith. Elie Wiesel's use of imagery and diction in Night makes readers understand the true atrocities of the Holocaust.
“Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere.” The Holocaust, led by Hitler, targeted the Jews, LGBTQ individuals, physically and mentally disabled people and members of political opposition groups. Elie Wiesel in his novel, Night, focuses on his experience as well as the expense of fellow Jews during their time in the concentration camps. Wiesel, in his novel, shows the deshumanization during the Holocaust by portraying the loss of basic human rights, the loss of their individuality, and the loss of familial connections for the Jews and prisoners of the concentration camps.
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.
Elie Wiesel’s autobiographical account on surviving the camps, Night, is a masterpiece and a horrific experience for him as a young adolescent. Elie, a Jewish boy who praised God, his family separated from him and put in a concentration camp in Auschwitz. His faith and determination are put to the test through a series of challenges upon him. As a result of the internal and external conflict, he faces while being in the captivity of the Nazis, Elie’s beliefs and values change.
Life was consumed by constant orders, labor, malnutrition, disease, and murder in the concentration camps. Yet somehow the human psyche in many individuals was able to endure throughout these imprisonments. Men and women were almost completely dehumanized during this genocide, but their psyche survived it. People had to find little things to keep themselves content and to nurture their psyche. “Humor was another of the soul’s weapons in the fight for self-preservation” (63). Humor allows a person to escape a situation and rise above it, even if only for a short time. Humor can never be taken away from anyone because it is naturally within us. Humor within the concentration camps allowed people, for even a split second, to feel like they
The author divides life into the field into three phases. Phase one, "The Shock." The symptom that characterizes this phase, according to Frankl, is the shock. As soon as they were at Auschwitz, they received a group of prisoners who spoke in every imaginable and well-fed European language. That is why the prisoners who arrived thought they could share their situation. They adopt the state of