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Man's Search For Meaning By Viktor E. Frankl

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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

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