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What Does Man's Search For Meaning Mean

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The torture of millions of people in concentration camps was done with ruthlessness and without meaning. Millions of people were killed mechanically, on a schedule. Those who survived had to find a purpose in their lives in order to continue living. This is the lead subject in Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. The dehumanization of prisoners made the ability to continue through these atrocities painfully difficult. A fervid symbol in Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, is Frankl’s assigned number, 119,104, as it shows the dehumanization of the prisoners and a stripping away of meaning. From the beginning of Frankl’s journey, the stripping of any meaning is shown through the destruction of identity. Morality is soon destroyed as well, with such things as the Capos showing their barbarism in camp life without sympathy towards their fellow prisoners. Lastly, the lack of any emotion towards those dying in the camp is experienced even by the prisoners themselves. The things that make people human are slowly ripped away throughout the camp experience. Following his arrival at the camp, Frankl found that all sense of identity, and significance with it, was replaced by a number. Frankl states, “It did not really matter which, since each of …show more content…

Frankl states, “After one of them had just died, I watched without any emotional upset the scene that followed, which was repeated over and over again with each death” (22). Frankl then describes other prisoners taking any items of use from the freshly dead body. The lack of apathy, Frankl’s self proclaimed second stage of camp life, is strongly shown here. Prisoners’ numbers left them detached from their former lives, changing their actions and emotions. Most normal people would show some sort of upset with the death of others around them, but the inmates were no longer people, they were numbers, husks of their former

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Frank committed a large scale crime, and was sent to a higher security prison. When Frank arrived, he learned the Penitentiary was unforgiving and broke spirits. “His lips were colorless, his fine teeth looked yellowish. He glanced at Alexandra sullenly, blinked as if he had come from a dark place, and one eyebrow twitched continuously” (Cather 103) Frank was portrayed as the antagonist in the entire book, except readers will sympathize for Frank

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In chapters 4 to 6 in the novel, “Night”, Elie Wiesel and his father continue to suffer in the grasp of the Germans. Eventually, all the Jews are moved to a new work camp, Buna, where they are overworked and undernourished, and resort to killing each other for pieces of bread. In his old home, Elie had never experienced brutality and inhumanity within it. Now, Elie and other Jews witness extreme violence and an absence of mercy that begins to erode their mental state; bringing most men to animalistic tendencies. In chapter 4, the Jews arrive in Buna.

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In the World War II extermination camp Chelmno there were 150,000 deaths, the camp Belzec had 435,000 deaths, and the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau camp ruled with over 1,000,000 deaths. In the unbelievable novel Night by Elie Wiesel, the author gives the audience a first person look on his experiences throughout his time at several prisoner of war camps as a Jewish teenager. Through the use of motifs about the night and a person’s eyes, Wiesel writes about the deeper meaning of how he kept his dignity in the face of inhumane cruelty. By analyzing the novel Night by Elie Wiesel, one can interpret the central theme of the story into a deeper meaning from the descriptions of the night and eyes, which is important because it helps younger generations to understand clearly what Holocaust survivors endured.

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The severely cruel conditions of concentration camps had a profound impact on everyone who had the misfortune of experiencing them. For Elie Wiesel, the author of Night and a survivor of Auschwitz, one aspect of himself that was greatly impacted was his view of humanity. During his time before, during, and after the holocaust, Elie changed from being a boy with a relatively average outlook on mankind, to a shadow of a man with no faith in the goodness of society, before regaining confidence in humanity once again later in his life. For the first 13 years of his life, Elie seemed to have a normal outlook on humanity.

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In the novel Night the protagonist, Elie Wiesel, narrates his experiences as a young Jewish boy surviving the Holocaust. Elie 's autobiographical memoir informs the reader about how the Nazis captured the Jews and enslaved them in concentration camps, where they experienced the absolute worst forms of torture, abuse and inhumane treatment. Dehumanization is shown in the story when the Jews were stripped of their identities and belongings, making them feel worthless as people. From the start of Elie Wiesel 's journey of the death camps, his beliefs of his own religion is fragile as he starts to lose his faith. Lastly, camaraderie is present as people in the camps are all surviving together to stay alive so as a result the people in the camp shine light on other people 's darkness.

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“A traumatic experience robs you of your identity” (Dr.Bill). Concentration camps during the agonizing Holocaust disallowed their prisoners to obtain a personal identity. The renowned memoir, Night, written by Holocaust survivor, Eliezer Wiesel, published in 1954 expands the apprehension of the life altering challenges and torment the Jewish society encountered from 1933 to 1945. Identity consists of an individual's distinctive characteristics, beliefs and mannerisms which was forbidden for the Jewish hostages of the Holocaust to attain. Elie’s identity was shaped and reshaped by the traumatic experiences the Jewish community persevered through.

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One of Wiesel 's strengths in Night is to show the full face of dehumanization. It is something that the Nazis perpetrated against the people they imprisoned. The tattooing of numbers on the prisoners, something that Eleizer notes, is of extreme importance. A- 7713 is by definition an example of dehumanization because it robs the humanity of the individual. The abuses that the Nazis perpetrate on their prisoners is another example of dehumanization.

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After going through so much, many people do not have the same mindset as they did before. Being tortured and watching others being tortured changes a person’s life, especially Elie’s, his father’s, Moshe the Beadle’s, and Rabbi Eliahou’s. Elie Wiesel, the author of Night, shares his own experience of going through a concentration camp, and it is clear that many things in his life changed

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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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With such dreadful conditions, the Jews began initiating resistance and uprisings. Even though the prisoners knew loss was unquestionable, they fought bravely and certain. The Jews wanted the future generation to know that they would never give up without a fight. The Nazi officers kept watch of the prisoners every second; the inhumanity of the guards murdered the spirit of the Jews. Because of the environment of the camps, a countless number of Jews died every day.

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One reoccurring theme that is present in the Holocaust is a change of identity with everyone involved. The incidents people confronted, especially the Jews, during this harsh time was life changing and traumatic. The identity of many in the concentration camps changed; young and innocent children developed into mature men. Elie Wiesel in the novella, Night, faces a change of identity within himself and the surrounding people, the Jews, through a variety of events that he encounters.

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The best way to summarize the novel Night, by Elie Wiesel, is to use the word “humanity” because of the way that Ellie struggles to preserve his own humanity as he experiences death camp, Auschwitz. Humanity is best defined as “the quality of being humane; kindness; benevolence.” Throughout Night, Elie display’s and contrasts how humanity and inhumanity are both key elements at the camp. This is the most effective way to summarize Night, for a multitude of reasons. Elie’s choices to include stories about the young boy’s hanging, his own father’s death, and the young boy who runs away from his father, are great examples of why humanity is one of the key principles in the book.

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At the beginning of the story, the camp is introduced as a rude, ruthless, and lawless place where every man only thinks about himself. All the characters are clichés, stereotypes of humanity; they are brutes, whose attention would not be attracted even by a fight to death, as it was so ordinary. In the first paragraph

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At times, it appears unviable for one’s life to transform overnight in just a few hours. However, this is something various individuals experienced in soul and flesh as they were impinged by those atrocious memoirs of the Holocaust. In addition, the symbolism portrayed throughout the novel Night, written by Elie Wiesel, presents an effective fathoming of the feelings and thoughts of what it’s like to undergo such an unethical circumstance. For instance, nighttime plays a symbolic figure throughout the progression of the story as its used to symbolize death, darkness of the soul,

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It’s difficult to imagine the way humans brutally humiliate other humans based on their faith, looks, or mentality but somehow it happens. On the novel “Night” by Elie Wiesel, he gives the reader a tour of World War Two through his own eyes , from the start of the ghettos all the way through the liberation of the prisoners of the concentration camps. This book has several themes that develop throughout its pages. There are three themes that outstand from all the rest, these themes are brutality, humiliation, and faith. They’re the three that give sense to the reading.

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