Rilke's 'Search For Meaning'

The Holocaust which was one of many of the controversial events that have happened in the history of our world demonstrated a significant amount of cruelty and dehumanization. Because of such a controversial event, many have suffered through physical and unfortunately psychological upheaval and distress. With previous knowledge and novels’ read on the Holocaust, it came to be known that the event was triggered through obedience and conformity due to the not specifically the Germans’ beliefs of anti-Semitic and propaganda, but more of leader Adolf Hitler. The time of the Holocaust was used to dehumanize which enhanced the understanding of mental health and human psychology. During the Holocaust, many psychological principles affected individuals forever. The principles include groupthink and of course knowing the outcome of the event. Such principles sooner explain the reality of life because it stresses how individuals react due to their past experiences like the Holocaust and most importantly how traumatic events build them as who they are today.  Innocent Jews went through starvation, terrible working conditions, and the elimination of race through torture such as gas chambers. Furthermore, the history of this controversial event is now being used to be alert of the health and wellness of those who have gone through such events that sooner change their behavior and mentality for the better or even worse.

We are meant to become our truest selves by finding meaning in our lives, which, according to Frankl, can come from three places: work, love, and our attitude in the face of horrific suffering or difficulty. And at the center of this meaning is our responsibility and human right to choose. In Frankl’s theory, we all strive to fulfill a self-chosen goal, from which meaning has the potential to be found. And if no meaning is found, there is meaning yet to be found, or meaning to be drawn from the apparent lack of meaning. Whatever the case, Frankl viewed man’s lack of meaning as the greatest existential crisis, the stress of this meaninglessness giving life and shape to all of our neuroses.

The concentration camps from World War II are part of a painful and tragic incident that we have learned about in school for many years. And while we are taught the facts, we may not fully understand the emotional impact it had upon the humans involved. Upon reading Night by Elie Wiesel, readers are given vivid descriptions of the gruesome and tragic behaviors that the Jews were forced to endure inside he treacherous concentration camps. Among all of the cruelties that the Jews were exposed to, a very significant form of the callous behaviors was the demoralization of the prisoners. Each inmate was given a tattoo of a number, and that tattoo became their new identity within the camp. Every prisoner was presented with tattered uniforms that became

The Holocaust was a horrifying time period for the Jews. Nearly 2,700,000 Jews were sent to extermination camps, where they were immediately killed. Millions of others were sent to concentration camps, where they were either killed or used as slave labor. However throughout this hellish time period, there were still some people who managed to stay positive. Etty Hillesum said that “big things” helped people’s spirits survive. During the Holocaust, love laughter and nature were the things that helped many spirits triumph.

The Holocaust, yet another unpleasant time in history tainted with the blood and suffering of man. Human beings tortured, executed and starved for hatred and radical ideas. Yet with many tragedies there are survivors, those who refused to die on another man’s command. These victims showed enormous willpower, they overcame human degradation and tragedies that not only pushed their beliefs in god, but their trust in fellow people. It was people like Elie Wiesel author of “Night”, Eva Galler,Sima Gleichgevicht-Wasser, and Solomon Radasky that survived, whose’ mental and physical capabilities were pushed to limits that are difficult to conceive. Each individual experiences were different, but their survival tales not so far-reaching to where the fundamental themes of fear, family, religion and self-preservation played a part in surviving. Although some of these themes weren’t always so useful for survival.

Shock, apathy, and disillusionment were three psychological stages that the prisoners of the Nazi concentration camps experienced. Ironically, it took an event of such tragedy and destruction to enable us to learn more about how the human mind responds to certain situations. Frankl’s methods for remaining positive can be used by every human being to give them a meaning in their lives regardless of what predicament or mental state they are in – it is in many ways like a phoenix risen from the

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.

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

Through Frankl's view of suicide you can discover his view of human person. Suicide is wrong in all cases, and should not be even considered an option. He believes that all people can find some meaning in life which would prevent them from giving up all hope and ending their lives. Every human life has meaning, and therefore every human life has value. While in a concentration camp serving as a doctor to those who were ill with typhus or other diseases, he encountered two individuals who had given up hope on life. He asked them both to think of something worth living for. One answered that he had a son waiting for him at home, and the other said he was writing a book and wanted to finish it. Frankl helped them find meaning in their lives to hold on to some hope. Just as they did, anyone can find a meaning to live for, whether it be another person or a goal or achievement.

Suffering. Pain. Misery. Death. ALl the negative thoughts in Human minds, many that we never want to face. Pain can take a toll on you, physically and mentally. Yet, imagine someone facing those hardships in reality but, what if it was reality that we never wanted to face; so we pushed it to its limits? Elie Wiesel was one of the many to face this tragic reality in Auschwitz, in the Concentration Camps, during the Holocaust...The pain of the Holocaust, the suffering of being ripped apart from your loved ones, to the mental and physical scars left by not only the S.S officers; but the horrors seen from the eyes of the purest souls. In the book “Night” by Elie Wiesel, Elie opens up the locked chest in his heart to tell us the horrifying experience that brought many to tears, otherwise known as The Concentration Camps and how

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.

The Holocaust is widely considered one of the darkest hours in world history. People of Jewish descent were imprisoned and confined to brutal conditions in concentration camps. Author Elie Wisel captures many of the atrocities of these detainments in his literary work, Night. Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs describes the needs and motivation of people (Boeree). In Night, Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs has a direct impact on the lives of the Jews and their relationships with each other.

Eighteen million Europeans went through the Nazi concentration camps. Eleven million of them died, almost half of them at Auschwitz alone.1 Concentration camps are a revolting and embarrassing part of the world’s history. There is no doubt that concentration camps are a dark and depressing topic. Despite this, it is a subject that needs to be brought out into the open. The world needs to be educated on the tragedies of the concentration camps to prevent the reoccurrence of the Holocaust. Hitler’s camps imprisoned, tortured, and killed millions of Jews for over five years. Life in the Nazi concentration camps was full of terror and death for its individual prisoners as well as the entire Jewish

However, Viktor Frankl took it a step further and combine it with logotherapy and his own experiences with suffering. While most people struggling to find meaning in their lives aren't in as serious of a situation as a concentration camp, they are still suffering. Frankl says that "he who has a why to live for can bear almost any how" (Frankl ). He tells people that by finding a reason to get through the suffering, they may find their “pain” is not so painful. Just as prisoners who had reasons to make it to liberation day defeated their suffering. Viktor Frankl said himself “that the meaning of his life, is to help others find the meaning of their’s” (Frankl

A notable example of this way of finding meaning is presented as Frankl recalls his experiences in the camp. He is then reminded of a moment in which the ethereal meaningfulness of love (in this case, the love he feels for his wife) is fully revealed. On an early morning walk to the work site, his mind is entranced completely by thoughts of his wife; so much so that the reality of his very existence in the camps is rendered null, that through the contemplation of his beloved, he is able to achieve a momentary bliss and fulfillment in this position of utter distress and devastation.