March 26, 1905 marked the birth of Viktor Frankl in Vienna. He was a son to Gabriel Frankl and Elsa Frankl from Marovia. He was the second born in a family of three and wanted to become a physician when he grew up. He was turned to study psychology by his liking for people. He met Freud in 1925 on his way to graduating and published an article “Psychotherapy and Weltanschauung”, which was followed by the use of the term “logo therapy” in a public lecture the following year. This led to his refining of his particular brand of Viennese psychology. He earned his doctorate in medicine in 1930 and was promoted to an assistant position in the Psychiatric University Clinic.
He left for the United States in 1939 when Hitler’s troop invaded Austria after obtaining a visa to America where he was made the leader in the neurological department of Rothschild Hospital. It was in 1942 when he got married and in the same year his wife, his father, mother and brother were arrested and taken to a camp in Bohemia. His wife, mother, brother and father died leaving his sister who had immigrated to Australia a short while before (Frankl, 2004). He was left hopeless by the loss of his family members and the destruction of his manuscript “The Doctor and the Soul”. Later on, he got a job position of director of the Vienna Neurological Policlinic back at his home in Vienna. He later reconstructed his book and wrote a different book, “Man’s Search for Meaning” in nine days. Viktor Frankl later died on September 2, 1997, of heart failure.
"Man's Search for Meaning" by Victor Frankl is a story that talks about the need for hope in future especially to people who are facing trouble and disillusionment in life. The story emphasizes on the need to have hope a...
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...could stop him from achieving whatever he had planned. The fact that his work was destructed did not make him lose hope in coming up with new work (Frankl, 2004). This shows that he was hardworking and devoted towards his work. Frankl is also depicted as being philanthropic because of his attitude of loving and helping human beings. The character of Frankl is exceptional and people should therefore believe in his advice that faith and hope are solutions for a good future.
Works Cited:
Frankl, Viktor Emil. Man's Search for Meaning. Mölln: Ratna, 2006. Print.
Frankl, Viktor Emil. Man's Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy – A Newly Revised and Enlarged Ed. of from Death-camp to Existentialism. Mölln: Beacon Press, 1962. Print.
Frankl, Viktor Emil. Man's Search for Meaning: The Classic Tribute to Hope from the Holocaust. Mölln: Rider, 2004. Print.
“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness,” Desmond Tutu once said (“Desmond Tutu Quotes”). During the Holocaust, the Jews were treated very badly but some managed to stay hopeful through this horrible time. The book Parallel Journeys by Eleanor Ayer shows how Helen Waterford and Alfons Heck who had two very different stories but managed to stay hopeful. Helen was a Jew who went into hiding for awhile before being taken away from her family and being sent to a concentration camp. Alfons was a member of the Hitler Youth where he became the youngest member of the German air force. To him, Hitler was everything and he would die any day for him and his country. As for Helen, Hitler was the man ruining her life. The Holocaust was horrible to live through but some managed to survive because of the hope they contained.
At first glance, Night, by Eliezer Wiesel does not seem to be an example of deep or emotionally complex literature. It is a tiny book, one hundred pages at the most with a lot of dialogue and short choppy sentences. But in this memoir, Wiesel strings along the events that took him through the Holocaust until they form one of the most riveting, shocking, and grimly realistic tales ever told of history’s most famous horror story. In Night, Wiesel reveals the intense impact that concentration camps had on his life, not through grisly details but in correlation with his lost faith in God and the human conscience.
Most historical events, whether beneficial or detrimental to society, bear witnesses. Regardless of how many total were affected by the event, each person owns a personal account of what they endured during the event. Elie Wiesel, author of Night, expresses the personal account of Elizer, a Jewish teenager, who fought to stay alive during the holocaust, and shows the importance of witness accounts, the will to survive, and the remembrance of past historical events. Night encompasses the idea of “Literature of Witness” by simultaneously showing how millions of people were affected by the holocaust and how each person, principally Elizer, has their own personal story to tell to understand and remember that horrendous time.
Niewyk, Donald . "The Will to Survive." In The Holocaust Problems and perspectives of Interpretation, ed. Donald L Niewyk. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997. 59-66.
In Viktor Frankl’s essay “Man’s Search For Meaning,” he recounts his experiences surviving the holocaust. Frankl shows how traumatic experiences shape people and force them to change in accordance with what is happening to them. Furthermore, he argues that adaptation was the only way he could survive. To prove this, he describes how he learned to shut himself off from certain aspects of his life and pay more attention to aspects of life that gave him hope, such as nature. Similarly, adaptation is also an important concern of Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved. In Beloved, Morrison explores Frankl’s idea about how people adapt differently to trauma, some love more than they previously had because they are finally free to do so, some try to find a shaky balance between independence and love and others rely too heavily on the love of a few.
Existentialists believe that “to live is to suffer; to survive is to find meaning in the suffering”. Despite all the horrific experiences in the concentration, Viktor Frankl is determined to not lose the significance of his life and succumb to the cruelty of his situation. With the use of three literary techniques- argumentation, rhetoric, and style- Frankl gives his proposition warrant that a man will not find meaning in his life by searching for it; he must give his life significance by answering questions life asks him.
Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet, Transylvania (later known as Romania) on September 30, 1928. Elie focused on Jewish religious studies before being relocated to Nazi death camps in WWII. Wiesel survived; he eventually began to write about his experiences in his memoir Night. He became an activist, orator and teacher. He spoke out against persecution and injustice. People should look at what Elie Wiesel and many other Jews went through just to be able to live in this world. The people living now should be appreciative of everything that is given and more.
The tragedies of the holocaust forever altered history. One of the most detailed accounts of the horrific events from the Nazi regime comes from Elie Wiesel’s Night. He describes his traumatic experiences in German concentration camps, mainly Buchenwald, and engages his readers from a victim’s point of view. He bravely shares the grotesque visions that are permanently ingrained in his mind. His autobiography gives readers vivid, unforgettable, and shocking images of the past. It is beneficial that Wiesel published this, if he had not the world might not have known the extent of the Nazis reign. He exposes the cruelty of man, and the misuse of power. Through a lifetime of tragedy, Elie Wiesel struggled internally to resurrect his religious beliefs as well as his hatred for the human race. He shares these emotions to the world through Night.
The Silber Medal winning biography, “Surviving Hitler," written by Andrea Warren paints picture of life for teenagers during the Holocaust, mainly by telling the story of Jack Mandelbaum. Avoiding the use of historical analysis, Warren, along with Mandelbaum’s experiences, explains how Jack, along with a few other Jewish and non-Jewish people survived.
Bressman, Eric (2006). Fighting Indifference: Looking at World Responses to the Holocaust with Elie Wiesel. Columbia University.
Viktor Frankl, the author of the novel Man’s Search For Meaning, a holocaust survivor and also known for his theory of locotherapy, explains the hardships that the holocaust brings while living in a concentration camp. Throughout his experience, he confesses that it is hard to have hope and faith in order to live. He gave strongly worded advice to other inmates and was also a doctor to the victims. He is seen as a powerful, bold, and courageous character towards everyone he meets. His stories and incidents that occur throughout the novel portray locotherapy, which is described as the search for meaning in life. By setting goals and looking toward the future can help to push through hardships such as the holocaust.
Kaplan, Marian A., Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany, Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1999
A excruciating pain, like the loss of a family member or close friend, may cause a person to lose faith for better times in life. This particular source of pain was seen all too much during the Holocaust. Between eleven and seventeen million people lost their lives in concentration and work camps all across Europe including Frankl’s own family. For the ones that this tragedy directly affected, their past occasionally became their present and future: “To be sure, a human being is a finite thing, and his freedom is restricted. It is not freedom from conditions, but it is free to take a stand towards the conditions” (Frankl 130). Frankl explains that while people have the ability to change their outlook on their surroundings, it’s often difficult to escape the aftermath of horrific events from the past. Humans cannot control when, where, and how they were raised. All these factors play a crucial part in the development of one’s personality and behaviors. Your view on life can either help you progress or halt your success in finding your meaning. A person who is lost in their past will not glimpse into the possibilities of what the future hold for them. Instead they will only be in a continuous state of nihilism and lack the motivation to have any type of future at
Magical Realism and Man's Search for Meaning Five Works Cited Real life experiences that happen in a person's life are important, and these are what magical realism is all about. The meaning of life is wrapped all into our way of living. The world is full of passion and magic and without this passion and magic the world would not exist. Victor Frankl, a 2oth century psychiatrist, had this passion as well as a lot of other people who have survived many obstacles in their lives. Magic is the marvelous in reality.
The meaning of life, defined by Victor E. Frankl, is the will to find your meaning in life. It is not the meaning of life in general, but rather the specific meaning of a person’s life at a given moment. He believes that if you are approached with the question of “what is the meaning of my life” or in this case, “life is meaningless,” then you should reverse the question to that person asking the question. For example: What are you bringing to me? What are you as an individual contributing to this life? This forces the person in question to take a look at themselves and to ultimately be responsible. Frankl says that if you are a responsible member of society than the meaning of life transcends from yourself rather from your own psyche. He also says that if we for some reason cannot find meaning within ourselves it has to be from some outside source. This is referred to as service. And an example of this is love. Victor Frankl describes three ways in which we can discover the meaning of life; Creating work-doing a deed, experiencing something-someone, and by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.