iktor E. Man 's Search for Meaning. Boston: Beacon, 2006. Print.
a. What ideas and insights of the author did you find to be the most profound and why?
b. How would you best describe the ethical core of the author? Cite evidence of that from the book.
c. In what ways did you allow the text to speak into your personal and professional life? How can the text contribute to your life? What changes, if any, would you like to make in your personal ethical framework as a result of having read the text?
d. What questions does the text inspire you to consider?
There is a sort of serendipity that I have been assigned to read this book at this particular time in my life. I say this for multiple reasons, the most important of which is the fact that my ex-husband has just recently received the crippling diagnosis of leukemia and is receiving treatment now for bone marrow cancer. Reading Man’s Search for Meaning was perhaps a salve for my breaking heart, but also a gut-wrenching reminder that life and its so-called ‘meaning’ are ephemeral.
Interestingly enough, I wonder how I got to this point in my life and have never been introduced to this book? Viktor Frankl’s autobiographical account of his life in the most desperate of times is a story of optimism in the truest sense of the word. This brave man was able to explore his meaning of life in the depths of personal despair. I am not doing a book review, and it is not my intention to do a summary of ones man’s account of the desolation that forever changed him. It is my intention to reflect on how this text inspired me, excited me, horrified me, and touched the recesses of my soul. I am reminded, again and again as I make my way through this book to “Live as if you were liv...
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...ing his story with all who read his words. He also bears his soul and gives readers the opportunity to see in a transparent way how he actively and intentionally manifested his attitude; in the most difficult of times he put on a brave face and acted genuinely with the environment, as well as with others.
In summary, my ex-husbands experience with cancer has made me question my own meaning of life. My self-imposed questions to find my personal meaning have changed since reading Man’s Search for Meaning and I have been more introspective and reflective about the many ways in which I get positive feedback in my own life. I believe that the search for meaning is a dynamic process that changes moment by moment. The point being made is to examine those moments. I will forward this book on to my friend living with cancer in hopes the text will help him find his meaning.
3. Select a passage that connects to your life in some way. Discuss what the passage means to you and how it connects to your life in a significant way.
...n & Co., Inc., 1962); excerpted and reprinted in Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 3, ed. Carolyn Riley (Detroit: Gale Research Inc., 1975), p. 526.
1.b. I do not think I'd like to live in this society because it does not allow free thinking, or anything else that makes humans the way they are. There was nothing to differentiate people, nothing to like or dislike about each other. The only thing that was good was that everyone was treated equal. In America, we say this, but there are obvious exceptions. Such is not the case in the world depicted in the novel.
14. Did the author convince you of his or her point of view on any issues?
1] What is Erdrich 's argument in this essay? State it in detailed, complete sentences. Is she persuasive? (Explain why or why not). What do you think is the most compelling/persuasive/memorable passage in this essay? Quote a few lines from the passage and tell why you chose it.
Joshua Nealy, a prominent medical school graduate, died last night from complications of losing his dream of becoming a practicing physician. He was 39 years-old. Soft-spoken and borderline obsessive, Joshua never looked the part of a “professional”, but, in the final days of his life, he revealed an unknown side of his psyche. This hidden quasi-Jungian persona surfaced during the last three years of pursuit of his long reputed dream profession, a position, which he spent nearly 10 years attaining. Sadly, the protracted search ended this past March 18th in complete and utter failure. Although in certain defeat, the courageous Nealy secretly clung to the belief that life is merely a series of meaningless accidents or coincidences. It’s not a tapestry of events that culminate in an exquisite, sublime plan. Asked about the loss of her dear friend, Emily, the girlfriend turned fiancé and dPT expert of Berkshire County, described Joshua as a changed man in the last years of his life. "Things were worse for him; not following his dream left him mostly lifeless, uninspired," Sammons noted. Ultimately, Joshua concluded that if we are to live life in harmony with the universe, we must all possess the powerful ability to change ourselves and the world around us; the choice to make ours from nothingness.
Camaraderie: There were many prisoners that came and went from the concentrations camps. Many friends died and gave up. Although Frankl did not have one specific comrade consistently throughout the novel he was surrounded by men who were in the fight for their lives. These naked men huddled together every night in the barracks to stay warm. There was camaraderie among all the prisoners because they knew what each other was going through. They were in it together. At one point Frankl acquired an illness yet he knew he was healthier than others. He still had the will to survive. Frankl aided to the typhus patients; he cared for the ones who stopped caring for themselves. When he was going to attempt to escape he had an encounter with one of his friends who was in the typhus ward. The friend knew what Frankl was attempting; and when Frankl stopped at his bed once again he rolled over and would not speak a word to him. Viktor Frankl decided not to escape that night. He knew if he left his fellow prison...
"People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive...." Joseph Campbell made this comment on the search for meaning common to every man's life. His statement implies that what we seem bent on finding is that higher spark for which we would all be willing to live or die; we look for some key equation through which we might tie all of the experiences of our life and feel the satisfaction of action toward a goal, rather than the emptiness which sometimes consumes the activities of our existence. He states, however, that we will never find some great pure meaning behind everything, because there is none. What there is to be found, however, is the life itself. We seek to find meaning so that emptiness will not pervade our every thought, our every deed, with the coldness of reality as the unemotional eye chooses to see it. Without color, without joy, without future, reality untouched by hope is an icy thing to view; we have no desire to see it that way. We forget, however, that the higher meaning might be found in existence itself. The joy of life and the experience of living are what make up true meaning, as the swirl of atoms guided by chaotic chance in which we find our existence has no meaning outside itself.
14. Did the author convince you of his or her point of view on any issues?
(C) analyze the way in which a work of fiction is shaped by the narrator's point of view.
b. Much of the chapter is a long explanation of how whites have brutalized nonwhites (pp.98-101). Difference between cynical and realist.
2. The structure of the essay allows it to prove one point completely and then refer to another. The author talks about sloppy people
Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, is a powerful and insightful book, however, does the center message intertwine with his religious beliefs? Frankl’s book shares the same concerns as religion such as: First, his beliefs of having nothing will give one a Higher Purpose; second, his belief that we must change to become worthy; and third, that we need fill an “empty soul” with God to find meaning.
c. Traditional writing is too historical. Instead of looking at writing of the past for
With all aspects of relating the meaning of life to ones personal setting, one can find themselves still with more questions then answers. This is one aspect all discussed situations have in common. We may have found a true meaning, but it always becomes questionable as to if the right decisions were made and the right paths taken base on the outcomes that follow. Although one may never find themselves with a true understanding for the biggest ‘why’ question of them all, the pursuit is always life changing. Life has, for most, always been a choice of free will, to do with what you please. Some choose to embrace this fact and pursue meaning never once imagined, and some choose the more comfortable, yet unsatisfying one of someone already travelled.