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Man's Search For Meaning Sparknotes

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Template for UH 200 Final Paper Part 1 - Introduction Viktor Frankl was a Jewish psychiatrist who survived the Holocaust. After his release, he founded logotherapy, a type of psychotherapy that focuses on finding the purpose of life. In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl first addresses what happens psychologically to an inmate in concentration camps. He then goes on to explain the basic principles of logotherapy and how it works. How did his experiences in the concentration camps inspire his creation of logotherapy? Was this mental enlightenment unique to him, or did the prisoners collectively experience it? Was Frankl able to find meaning within the suffering of himself and countless others? As an individual reads this book, they …show more content…

Since the other prisoners refused to give him up, they were all being starved. Why did Frankl believe that his encouragement was necessary? Frankl saw the deep inner good and evil within people in the concentration camps. Even though it would cause them more pain and misery, the prisoners decided to show humanity and not give up their fellow prisoner. Frankl wanted to foster this inner goodness. The other prisoners were just as tired and hungry, and one of them would likely soon rat out on their comrade. Frankl wanted to encourage them to continue suffering for a good reason. If they were to give up now, they would have still suffered just as long. Furthermore, by breaking the willpower and collective humanity of the prisoners, the guards would be able to further dehumanize and cause many prisoners to lose their motivation to keep living. Frankl knew he had the ability and knowledge to encourage the other prisoners, so he had an obligation to himself to try and speak to them …show more content…

Could this be applied to more trivial matters or is this advice exclusive to extreme suffering? This could be applied to many domestic disputes or arguments. For example, if there is a chore that both someone and their partner dislikes, such as doing the dishes, that person could embrace doing the chore as way to avoid making their partner suffer. By thinking of it as a sacrifice, the one person could feel pride in doing a disliked job, while the partner can appreciate not doing the job and the fact that their partner is willing to do it for them. If both partners were to employ this philosophy, their relationship could run

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“In a few seconds, we had ceased to be men” (Wiesel 36). This quote from Night, by Elie Wiesel, shows how almost immediately, the victims of the Holocaust were dehumanized. The prisoners were stripped of every quality that made them human and were changed to fit the Nazi’s needs. In his memoir, Wiesel tells the tragedy from his memories as a prisoner of the concentration camps, while gradually losing his faith in his religion and humanity. The loss of his identity, dignity, and the inhumane conditions he had to face are the most prominent ways the dehumanization changed Wiesel’s attitude, outlook, and identity.

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In Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor E. Frankl, the author, experienced the events of the Holocaust camps first hand. He got to see how people survived, and how they didn’t. Frankl tells the tale of a man who believed that on March thirtieth, he would be saved. Frankl recalls that “When F---- told me about his dream, he was still full of hope and convinced” that it was true (Frankl 79) The man’s hope of this day kept him alive in a time when he might have given up.

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lie Wiesel’s experiences of dehumanization in the Nazi concentration camps extraordinarily influence his behavior and identity. During his time in the camps, Elie demonstrated extreme behavioral adaptations to survive the treatment; these were made possible by the erasing of his identity. Elie’s identity is established in the opening pages of the book. Elie is characterized as a deeply religious and intelligent person.

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The human condition is a very malleable idea that is constantly changing due to the current state of mankind. In the memoir Night by Elie Wiesel, the concept of the human condition is displayed in the worst sense of the concept, during the Holocaust of WWII. During this time, multiple groups of people, most notably European Jews, were persecuted against and sent to horrible hard labor and killing centers such as Auschwitz. In this memoir, Wiesel uses complex figurative language such as similes and metaphors to display the theme that a person’s state as a human, both at a physical and emotional level, can be altered to extreme lengths, and even taken away from them, under the most extreme conditions.

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Wiesel wanted people to remember those who did not make it, “Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.” By forgetting about the tragic events and the lives lost in the Holocaust, we fall under the impression that the lives lost in the Holocaust were not important to remember, but they were. Millions of lives, innocent lives, had been lost simply because people were of Jewish faith and that was enough for Adolf Hitler to say that they were less than. Wiesel had hoped that he could persuade the people into continuing to remember what had happened. He had hoped that people would learn from the tragic events of the Holocaust, and they would fight against indifference and prevent something like the Holocaust from happening again.

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However he fought the tragic circumstances to stay alive until the end. He wanted to kill himself as soon as he arrived at the concentration camp because of the horrible conditions. “If that is true, then I don’t want to wait. I’ll run into the electrified barbed wire. That would be easier than a slow death to the flames (33)”.

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Night By Elie Wiesel Critical Analysis

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His story displays how, though experiences affect decisions, it is the individual who chooses to either find purpose when there does not seem to be a clear objective, or allow one’s anguish to be fruitless. This concept is further explored with psychiatrist Viktor Frankl’s idea of logotherapy, and discussed in Elie’s interview with talk show host Oprah Winfrey decades after the Holocaust. In Night, Elie is overwhelmed by his suffering, as he experiences a deprivation of individuality, degradation of faith, and drainage of emotion, but he manages to find a way to channel this affliction into productivity and become a survivor rather than a victim. It is easy to misunderstand how devastating life in a concentration camp was, but through Elie’s loss of identity and distrust in God, the reader can discern the

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