Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl "On the average, only those prisoners could keep alive who, after years of trekking from camp to camp, had lost all scruples in their fight for existence; they were prepared to use every means, honest and otherwise, even brutal force, theft, and betrayal of their friends, in order to save themselves. We who have come back, by the aid of many lucky chances or miracles - whatever one may choose to call them - we know: the best of us did not return." (p. 7) The Three Phases of the Inmate's Mental Reactions to Camp Life: a) the period following his admission Symptom = shock "Delusion of reprieve": "The condemned man, immediately before his execution, gets the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last moment. We, too, clung to the shreds of hope and believed to the last moment that it would not be so bad." (p. 14) 1) a grim sense of humor 2) cold curiosity 3) thoughts of suicide "An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior." (p. 30) b) The period when he is well entrenched in camp routine a) Relative apathy, a kind of emotional death "Disgust, horror and pity" were "emotions" one could "not really feel anymore. The sufferers, the dying and the dead, became such commonplace sights to him after a few weeks of camp life that they could not move him anymore." (p. 33) "...the prisoner soon surrounded himself with a very necessary protective shell." (p. 35). b) Extreme hunger from undernourishment & preoccupation with food c) Absence of sexual urge d) "Cultural hibernation," with the two exceptions: politics and religion "In spite of all the enforced physical and mental primitiveness of life in a concentration camp, it was possible for spiritual life to deepen. Sensitive people who were used to a rich intellectual life may have suffered much pain (they were often of a delicate constitution), but the damage to their inner selves was less. They were able to retreat from their terrible surroundings to a life of inner riches and spiritual freedom." (p. 56). On love while thinking on his wife while marching: "...for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that love is the ultimate and the
"He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world.
“I was a body. Perhaps less than that: a starved stomach. The stomach alone was aware of the passage of time” (Night Quotes). Small, infrequent, rations of a broth-like soup left bodies to perish, which in return left no energy for labor. If one wasn’t killed by starvation or exhaustion, they were murdered by fellow detainees.
Death. Only two things are certain in life, death, and taxes. As the Human condition is concerned death is directly related to mortality. Mortality is in a sense the focus of all human existence. In most cases, the human mind inadvertently neglects this concept. In the true depth of mortality is hidden behind a shroud of humor. In the inquisitive, the brain creates a logical fallacy to cope with the concept. The basis of the human condition is mortality. The main points of the human condition are birth, growth, emotionality, aspiration, conflict, and mortality. Birth, growth, and aspiration all stem from the concept of mortality.
time in detention camps. How far the principle of this case would be extended before plausible reasons would play out, I do not know." (pg. 1389).
The day to day life for the regular soldier was not glorious. Many times the regiments were low on supplies such as food and clothing. They lived in the elements. Medical conditions were grotesque because of the lack of advanced equipment and anesthesia. “Discipline was enforced with brutality” as if all the other conditions were not bad enough.
Between Night and The Hiding Place, comradeship, faith, strength, and people of visions are clearly proved to be essential in order to survive in these death camps. Corrie, Elie, and other victims of these harsh brutalities who did survive had a rare quality that six million others unfortunately did not.
Martinez, J. Michael. Life and Death in Civil War Prisons: The Parallel Torments of Corporal John Wesley Minnich, C.S.A. and Sergeant Warren Lee Goss, U.S.A. Nashville, TN: Rutledge Hill, 2004. Print.
Others weep for the ones lost. They then got prison clothes that were ridiculously fitted. They made exchanges and went to a new barracks in the “gypsies’ camp.” They waited in the mud for a long time. They were permitted to another barracks, with a gypsy in charge of them.
(It should be noted that when describing hardships of the concentration camps, understatements will inevitably be made. Levi puts it well when he says, ?We say ?hunger?, we say ?tiredness?, ?fear?, ?pain?, we say ?winter? and they are different things. They are free words, created and used by free men who lived in comfort and suffering in their homes. If the Lagers had lasted longer a new, harsh language would have been born; only this language could express what it means to toil the whole day?? (Levi, 123).)
These hardships included: the harsh weather, watching friends die, killing mass amounts of the enemy, and many more things that can slowly break down even the toughest soldier from the inside out. For example, the author describes a vivid scene after a group of soldiers and refugees had been under attack on Christmas and were now looking for supplies. A man named the Baron Charles de Radzitsky d’Ostrowick had gone into a house in search of water. Toland describes what the Baron sees; “The Baron sickened as he stepped over the debris to the door. Here thirty bodies-American and German-were stacked as if for future reference. He picked his way through the human refuse to the courtyard. Outside, bodies were so thick he climbed onto a wall.” (275)
In the article “Reading and Thought” the author Dwight MacDonald provides criticism and disagreement with Henry Luce’s idea of “functional curiosity”. Luce developed the term “functional curiosity” defining it as an eagerness of people to know the latest news happening around the world. On the other hand, MacDonald concludes that functional curiosity only strengthens reader’s practice in reading rather than in providing invaluable information. He underlines that literature nowadays is deficient and insubstantial since there is no deep meaning in the texts. Modern printed literature is simply being skimmed through by the reader as the reader nowadays tends to avoid too much information resisting thinking in such a way. Because of the new nature of the printed materials, MacDonald considers today’s reading behavior and the way people think as flimsy and indifferent. I agree that our thought has definitively changed since we are paying less time to serious critical thinking losing connections with society and awareness of it.
Viktor Frankl's concept regarding survival and fully living was developed through his observations and experiences in the concentration camps. He used his psychiatric training to discern the meanings of observations and to help himself become a better person. He uses analysis to develop his own concepts and describes them in steps throughout the book. When the prisoners first arrived at the camp most of them thought they would be spared at the last moment. The prisoners believed they had a chance of surviving, but this belief was eventually eliminated and it was at this time when the prisoners began to learn how to survive by using their internal strength. A sense of humor had emerged among the prisoners. This humor helped to get through some difficult situations they faced. Viktor also observed how much a person could really endure and still live. Even though the prisoners could not clean their teeth and were deprived of warmth and vitamins, they still were able to survive. The sores and abrasions on their hands did not suppurate despite the dirt that gathered on them from the hard labor. The challenge of staying alive under these wretched conditions was to have and maintain strong internal strength. During the time he spent in the camps, Viktor learned what was needed to survive and how to keep his internal strength despite his weakening external strength. During the second stage of Viktor's psychological reaction, prisoners lost their sense of feeling and emotion toward events that would be emotional to people outside the camps. This was a result of the violent environment, which consisted of beatings of prisoners and the death of many others. The prisoners could no longer feel any disgust or horr...
In “Meaning of Life”, Richard Taylor begins with questioning the meaning of life. He mentions this is rather hard to do and decides to define what meaninglessness is in order to understand the exact opposite: meaningfulness. Taylor asks the reader to recall the famous myth of Sisyphus to come about the definition of meaninglessness. He states that Sisyphus was condemned to roll a large boulder up a hill, only to have that boulder roll back down the hill, forcing him to repeat the task forever. Despite all his efforts, his existence amounts to nothing more than endlessly repeating the same task, which itself contributes to no greater goal or purpose. This, Taylor suggests, is the very image of meaninglessness. He defines meaninglessness as the following: “Meaninglessness is essentially endless pointlessness, and meaningfulness is therefore the opposite” (270).
Dachau and its sub camps were awful places in general, but living as a prisoner in these camps was even worse, just as the marches were. The physical characteristics that made up Dachau and its sub camps were horrifying. The prisoners that had to face the extreme conditions of camps were certainly not oblivious to everything that was happening. Marches were a significant part of prisoners’ lives during the later parts of World War II. Lives of prisoners during World War II were horrendous throughout. This was the life Max most likely endured after he left th...
Magical realism was first coined by Franz Roh when he was writing about paintings. Artaro Ulsar Pietri was the first to use the term when talking about literature. Magical realism is also related to other academic fields such as philosophy, psychology, mathmatics, physics, and theology. Im magical realism, "the writer confronts reality and tries to untangle it, to discover what is mysterious in things, in life, in human acts" (Leal 121). Viktor E. Frankl uses this concept in his book Man's Search For Meaning.