There Is More Than Being Happy Analysis

Kathy Szelag

Professor Goldenstern

LAS 318

Due Date: 03/12/17

Creating a Meaning Through Art

After reading the Atlantic article “There is More to Life than Being Happy” and “Life in the Iron Mills” by Rebecca Harding Davis, I could understand how the character Hugh strives to find meaning in the iron mills through his art. In the Atlantic article the main point was that the key to a fulfilled life is ‘meaning.’ This article is about Viktor Frankl who was a Jewish psychiatrist and neurologist in Vienna who was later sent to the Nazi concentration camps. Through his experiences with suicidal patients he realized that it is not about being happy. He concluded that the one thing that fuels people and keeps them going is their meaning in life.

Molyneaux she analyzes and compares some of Harding Davis’s works. She mentions, “The statues represent what is most precious to Hugh, his "groping passion for whatever was beautiful and pure" (23), and, in the material from which they are made, what is most repellant to him; the korl, a "light, porous substance, of a delicate, waxen, flesh-colored tinge" (24), signifies the wasted flesh, the terrible vulnerability, and the sheer expendability of millworkers. The making of one object, the korl perceived as waste in the industrial economy, into a second object, a work of art that embodies only Hugh's wasted self, endlessly reproduces the central opposition of his life (165).” Once again this ties in Frankl’s and Baumeister’s point on how meaning is creating by investing in something bigger than yourself. Hugh invested a lot of time and put in a lot of details into the woman made of korl. He used her as a symbol to indicate that she is hungry, not for food but for opportunities. Hugh used his talents to strive to find meaning through his art. Finding the Meaning in Your Work by Katharine Brooks she mentions that one out of the five dimensions of meaning is using your