Night By Frankl

I find the theme in this book to be something that an anyday person or child would experience in a day or much longer piece of time. Any person can experience times of confusion and emotional instability, but if that person sticks it out; they will find an answer to their problems or they will answer answer it for themselves. This pertains to a lifelong conflict, but it does not just pertain to that. It relates to a situation in a day, week, or even, an

These victims were desperate for some relief. Wiesel and many others were tortured beyond belief. In Night, Wiesel says, “Faster! Faster! Move, you lazy good-for-nothings! “The Hungarian police were screaming.That was when I began to hate them, and my hatred remains our only link today. They were our first oppressors. They were the first faces of hell and death.” In this quote, Wiesel tells the reader that the way they were treated was the reasons that they knew they were going to die. The way that Wiesel and the other victims was treated was enough to be so desperate that some of them saw death as the only way

The Jews had been starved while being detained in forced labor camp. Those who weren’t fit to work were killed and cremated. The most eye-opening description of the Jewish peoples’ state in the concentration camp came at the very end of the book. After being freed, Wiesel looked in a mirror for the first since his arrival at the camp. Wiesel described his reflection as a “corpse” and stated “the look in his eyes… has never left me.” (Wiesel 115). Not only had the Nazis carried out a brutal campaign on the Jews’ physical being, but they had also infiltrated deep into their psyche. Upon arrival at camps, all Jews’ were forced to hand over all of their clothes and wearing matching uniforms. After that, the prisoners’ were sent to the barber. Wiesel described the process, stating, “[The barbers’] clippers tore out our hair, shaved every hair on our bodies.” (Wiesel 35). After this process, every Jew was tattooed with a number. This process lead to the ego-death of every prisoner. They were no longer people: they were numbers. Nothing differentiated one Jew from another, besides the numbers tattooed on them. This horrendous act could only be classified as psychological torture, carried out by monsters who had lost control of their own

After being cooped up in squalor and surrounded by torture for four years, the prisoners couldn’t grasp the concept of their own freedom: “Its reality did not penetrate into our consciousness; we could not grasp the fact that freedom was ours” (88). They had looked forward to it so much that when it came it was almost like an anti-climax. The freed prisoners also had a strong desire for retribution: “They became instigators, not objects, of willful force and injustice. They justified their behavior by their own terrible experiences” (90). Frankl went onto refute this by saying, “that no one has the right to do wrong, not even if wrong has been done to them” (91). Moreover, the prisoners had kept positive in the camps by thinking that they will see their loved ones upon release. Sadly, for many they found that “the person who should open the door was not there, and would never be there again” (92). To these people Frankl imposed the idea that even suffering has a meaning in life; that it is the individual’s responsibility to overcome it and keep fighting on until their last breath. Ultimately, “there is nothing he need fear anymore-except his God” (93).

Happiness in our society is harder to find than in the society of Fahrenheit 451, but once achieved, it is a true happiness, one which grows upon its seeds, and sprouts a great and fulfilling life for that person. The average citizen in our society believes themselves to be happy, but in reality, they too are replacing their true desires and childhood dreams with superficial entertainment and mindless activities, which resembles the society which is portrayed in Fahrenheit 451.

Not only were the prisoners told this but put through torture that is cannot be explained or understood. Before they arrived to camps, they were even treated unwell. When being transported to the ghettos, and going through an unnatural famine caused by the Germans. They mentally had to accept these ways as normal. “Llittle by little life returned to ‘normal.’ The barbed wire that encircled us like a wall did not fill us with real fear.” (11) The Hungarian police where rude to elders, children, and crippled, “used their rifle butts, their cliubs to indiscriminately strike old men and women, children and cripples.” (16) The officers did not care how they felt, even when they felt like, “the heat was oppressive. Sweat streamed from people’s faces and bodies. Children were crying for water.” (16) They called them such horrible names and yelled, “Faster! Faster! Move, you lazy good-for-nothings!” (19) It made the Jewish feel like this was the only world that they knew of was torture and sadness. They knew nothing of true happiness or kindness. When being shipped into the cattle cars on the way to concentration camps, Elie says, “The world had become a hermetically sealed cattle car.” (24) They felt like they were being treated like cattle, “’We must do something. We can’t let them kill us like that, like cattle in the slaughterhouse. We must revolt.’” (31) The inmates felt like they lost their self-respect, they feared others, and only knew pain. They were so scared that they started to think they were dreaming, “I pinched myself: Was I still alive? Was I awake? How was it possible that men, women, and children were being burned and that the world kept silent?”

The book has a moody tone, where the character tries to feel happy, but cannot be happy because of the lack of attention from citizens but tries to find happiness instead by friends he makes along his journey of poverty. “So," he said, "we ourselves will be the candle flames." He put his hands on his chest. "Feel your hearts, how warm they are.” This quote had a moving touch of me, the power of friendship has a taste of happiness inside, but this quote was so strong that this quote warmed up my own rough heart. It tries to give the characters some happiness so that they can push themselves to survive. I find this quote very important in the story, because this quote builds up to the character realizing what

In the camps, the prisoners were continuously being persecuted and there were always selections going on as well. The selections would determine whether you were valuable to them or not. If you weren’t, you were killed and if you were, you continued to work. All of these things caused the Jews to be in a state of hopelessness and apathy while always being quite anxious too (Gutman, 1). With

Wiesel uses imagery to paint you a picture, a terrible one but, it 's one that you will not forget. Wiesel wants you to understand that these concentration camps were no girl scout camps, but a camp where it was life or death at any given moment. Wiesel shows you through his diction that the events that occurred at that camp still eat away at him to this present day.

In order to be happy, people must have a purpose in life. This theme is demonstrated through both symbolism and mood in the passages “Andy Lovell” by T.S. Arthur and “The Song of the Old Mother” by William Butler Yeats. Through these literary devices, the authors show that by not following your passion, you will eventually become miserable. Because of their powerful words, the reader gets a firm grasp on the importance of objectives in life.

All of the prisoners experienced terrible things that changed the way they processed situations. Something that no man would have let slide by occurred during the death marches. The book says,”He must have died, trampled under the feet of the thousands of men who followed us.” Before the Holocaust nobody would have let a young die like that. They would have cared, and

Many books were published about Holocaust, but Frankl’s work is “One of the outstanding contribution to psychological thought . . .” (Carl Rogers. 1959). Frankl, a psychiatrist and neurologist, spent 3 years in Nazis concentration camps where he underwent

The philosopher Aristotle once wrote, “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” This famous quote compels people to question the significance of their joy, and whether it truly represents purposeful lives they want to live. Ray Bradbury, a contemporary author, also tackles this question in his book, Fahrenheit 451, which deals heavily with society's view of happiness in the future. Through several main characters, Bradbury portrays the two branches of happiness: one as a lifeless path, heading nowhere, seeking no worry, while the other embraces pure human experience intertwined together to reveal truth and knowledge.

In “There’s More to Life Than Being Happy,” Emily Esfahani Smith writes about the conflict between Viktor Frankl’s book, “Man’s Search for Happiness” and the culture today, which focuses on happiness in life rather than meaning. She introduces Viktor Frankl as a star medical and psychology student who survived the Holocaust in 1942. While Frankl was kept hostage in his camp, he was forced to find the good in life in order to survive. After being liberated, Frankl recorded his experience and what he learned in nine days, creating a best-seller in the United States. Smith explains that even though it has been concluded that Americans’ happiness is at an all-time high, the Center for Disease Control says that almost fifty percent of Americans have not found a purpose in life. Smith tells that bad mental health, self-esteem, and depression are less likely to be found in those who have found a pleasurable meaning in life. Happiness is associated with being a “taker”, while having a meaning life is associated with being a “giver” according to Smith. The downside to having a purpose for one’s life is the fact that he or she is usually more unhappy due to stress and worry than those who only strive for happiness, Smith explains. A study in 2011 proved that if someone has a negative circumstance occur in his or her lifetime, that event will give him or her more of a drive to find meaning in life rather than happiness. Smith concluded by linking these other sources with Frankl’s

The premise of Frankl’s book is that mankind’s desire for meaning is much stronger than its desire for power or pleasure and that if man can find meaning in life he can survive anything. Frankl introduces this idea [which he calls the theory of logotherapy] throughout his concentration camp experiences in the book’s first section and delves deeper into it in the second section. Referencing Nietzsche, Frankl tells us “Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how'” (p. 80). The most important thing to be learned from this statement is that no matter what your circumstances are, you can be happy, or at least survive, if you find a meaning or purpose in life. While in the concentration camp Frankl tells us that in order to maintain his desire to have a meaningful life he focused on three main things: suffering, work, and love. Of sacrifice