Diamond Ervin Eng. 1302 Prof. Webb 25 April 2016 Frankls: Man Search for Meaning What if you were in Frankls shoes? I will write today about the hardships, the torture and starvation the prisoners in the camp faced. In Victor Frankls: Man Search for Meaning. In the camp there were three phases. Phase one was the entrance in to the camp. Phase two was getting used to being in the concentration camp and phase three is freedom from the camp. In the first criteria I will describe the three phases of camp life: The first phase was shock, many prisoners faced shock when being admitted into the camp. Victor frankl mentioned, “long stretches of several rows of barbed wire fences, water towers, search lights, and long columns of ragged human figures.” …show more content…
(Frankl 9). None of the prisoners expected the camp that way it was when they got there. They felt betrayed and “delusion of reprieve”, because when they arrived they saw happy, healthy people working, but that's when they never heard of a Capos. It mentioned, little did we know then that they formed a special chosen elite, who for years had been the receiving squad for new transports as they rolled into the station day after day.” (Frankl 10). You had to become a Capos or the everyday tori tre and beatings would be you. At the camp all of your prized possessions, no matter what it was had to be turned in. If you were caught with something you were hung, including you name because at this camp you were considered a number. Frankl described the first phase as “shock”, after that from the entrance of camp prisoners started to face apathy (phase 2). Victor Frankl mentioned, “Disgust, horror, and pity are emotions that our spectators could not really feel anymore.” (Frankl 22). Basically the prisoners had to desensitize from the things around them at the camp. The starving and beatings of people, was not nothing new anymore; something they were used to just had to hope they were not next. “after one of them had just died, I watched without any emotional upset the scene that followed… the prisoners grabbing the remains of a messy meal of potatoes, wooden shoes, and genuine string.” (Frankl 22). It was about about surviving now; what will you do to survive, face the fate of run from it? That was the second phase now the last, the delusion of being released with the prisoners being beaten, tortured, treated wrong for years they did not know how to cope with freedom. “It’s reality did not penetrate into our consciousness, we could not group the fact that freedom was ours.” (Frankl 88). All the prisoners wanted to be free but when they were free they did not know what to do. The prisoners figured suffering was the meaning to life, so why be it. The second criteria to be evaluated is Frankls use of suffering.
In Victor Frankl essay he mentioned suffering very often. Frankl expresses the suffering of him and his fellow inmates. For example, "Has all this suffering, all this dying around us, a meaning? For, if not, then ultimately there is no meaning to survival; for a life whose meaning depends on such a happenstance--as whether one escapes or not--ultimately would not be worth living at all." (Frankl ). As Frankl is in the camp he notices that there is no good here, nothing but suffering. He suffers from having his readings took from him, his wife, really everything… …show more content…
life! The third criteria to be evaluated is the use of hopelessness. How can you have hope when your living in a hell hole. Hopelessness played a big part in Frankls essay because that's how all the prisoners felt. They were in life or death situations! Frankl mentioned, “We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement. The prisoners have to get it how they live, they had to live their lives and not think about being next. I wrote about suffering because I feel like I have suffered most my life, not only in school but at home too.
I was diagnosed with ADD– Attention Deficit Disorder, when I was 5. My mom noticed I had a disorder before I was diagnosed and so did my teachers. They always wondered why I never was picking up on my school work. There was a big debate when I attended Rapoport Academy when I was kicked out for a behavioral points system they ran. The points I earned was not from bad behavior, they were received from bad grades on assignments. Before my mom could disagree I was kick out of school and was moved to WISD. At Rapoport I had an aid but when I transferred to WISD I stopped receiving help. In Frankls essay they suffered in a camp, I feel like I can relate to them in a way only in
suffering. Frankl was put in a concentration camp. He went through torture, starvation, all kinds of unfair treatment. Frankls manuscript was taken from him when he first arrived to the camp. Frankl was split up from his wife and later learned he lost his wife in the concentration camp. Eventually being released Frankl wrote his essay out and is now writing books. Work Cited Frankl, Viktor E. Man’s Search for Meaning. Trans. Isle Lasch. Boston: Bacon Press, 2006. Print. Translated by Iise Lasch "Man's Search for Meaning." Psychology Today, 24 May 2012. Web. 22 Apr. 2016.
There are unexpected aspects of life in the camp depicted in “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlement” by Tadeusz Borowski. The prisoners were able to make very obvious improvements to their lived in the camp, without reaction by the SS officers; the market was even made with the support of the camp. The prisoners actually hoped for a transport of prisoners, so as to gain some supplies. The true nature of the camp is never forgotten, even in better moments at the camp.
Eventually, the “camp had eight sections: detention camp, two camps for women, a special camp, neutrals camp, ‘star camp’, Hungarian Camp, and a tent camp.” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, p.165) It also held prisoners who were too ill/weak to work at the “convalescent camp” (Bauer, Yehuda, p.359) Each section had its own function and its type of prisoners. The “Detention camp housed Jewish prisoners brought in to construct the camp.”
The insight of Frankl’s ideas and meaning, have helped the other inmates physically and psychologically survive under the inhumane abuse. This is why the author and main character Viktor Frankl affected me the most during my reading of these torturous experiences. Whether he was curing ones typhus, or causally giving advice to the other prisoners, he was always thinking of others, and was seen as a courageous figure to the other individuals at the camp. For example, on page 58 Frankl talks about how he will be escaping the camp with his friend. He states how he checked on his patients one last time before his freedom and saw the sad look in one of his deathly patients eyes. He felt unsatisfied with leaving his hopeless patients and then began to tell his friend that he could not leave camp. He stated, “I did not know what the following days would bring, but I gained an inward peace that I had never experienced before. I returned t...
And indeed, suffering, lack of safety, is unavoidable, and also necessary for some things. "When I was downstairs before, on my way here, listening to that woman sing, it struck me all of a sudden how much suffering she must have had to go through. It's repulsive to think you have to suffer that much" (65). But we do. Everyone does. In fact, "There's no way not to suffer" (65). We are never safe from it.
Through his narrative, Frankel describes the daily struggles, hardships, and unexpected humanity he found within the camps. As OTs we often serve as a source of humanity, for clients who experience daily struggles and hardships. Similarly, to Frankel, our clients are often being challenged to change themselves due to their circumstances. Frankel describes these challenges as “human potential at
Suffering is apart of life, just like joy and love is. We can never choose how life treats us but we can always choose how we react and get back up again. Through Fever 1793 we see up close and personal how suffering can affect us, and how sometimes it can affect us in positive ways. How suffering can help turn the page to the next chapter in our lives. How suffering doesn’t always mean losing but also gaining.
In Iyer’s article he comments on how suffering is handled in different situations and he goes into different explanations on how suffering could be interpreted. One example he gave was using a Buddhist interpretation, “Wise men in every tradition tell us that suffering brings clarity, illumination; for the Buddha, suffering is the first rule of life, and insofar as some of it
“A typical concentration camp consisted of barracks that were secured from escape by barbed wire, watchtowers and guards. The inmates usually lived in overcrowded barracks and slept in bunk “beds”. In the forced labour camps, for
Suffering arises early in the story and is a theme is a them that will preside over the entire text, valuable to the reader because of The Buddha’s first Noble Truth: human life is consists almost entirely of suffering. When the Buddha is just a baby, the relief from suffering he will provide is predicted. “Be steadfast, therefore, give up anxiety, be cheerful, for your clan will flourish without a doubt; The one born here as your son is the leader of those overcome by the suffering in the world” (B 1.33). The
Being confined in a concentration camp was beyond unpleasant. Mortality encumbered the prisons effortlessly. Every day was a struggle for food, survival, and sanity. Fear of being led into the gas chambers or lined up for shooting was a constant. Hard labor and inadequate amounts of rest and nutrition took a toll on prisoners. They also endured beatings from members of the SS, or they were forced to watch the killings of others. “I was a body. Perhaps less than that even: 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. It was a survival of the fittest between the Jews. Death seemed to be inevitable, for there were emaciated corpses lying around and the smell...
Frankl describes on page twenty-six, of the horrors that he faced as he encountered accounts of the gas chambers disguised as bathhouses. As the unjustly prisoned f...
In his book This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, Tadeusz Borowski shows how the conditions and situations that the prisoners were put through made them make a choice that most humans never face. The choice of compassion and concern for ones fellow man or only loving and caring for one’s self. This may sound harsh people, but after seeing, hearing, smelling and feeling the things they did in camp, it was the only way to survive physically and mentally. The narrator in the book makes the decision numerous times and suffers from these choices as he
The events experienced in Auschwitz by Wiesel would influence him to write about this moment. Though Wiesel had difficulty expressing the trial that he experienced, he discovered that formatting the event into ...
Suffering is an individual's basic affective experience of pain or distress, often as a result of one’s physical, emotional or spiritual circumstance (Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy 2006). Suffering can be classified as physical; for example pain caused by a dislocated knee, emotional; for example one’s grief over the death of a loved one, or spiritual; which is described as the state of being separated from the blissful nature of your divine self (soul). To suffer physically or emotionally is often unavoidable; however it can be argued that spiritual liberation...
Suffering can be defined as an experience of discomfort suffered by a person during his life. The New York Times published an article entitled what suffering does, by David Brooks (2014). In this article, Brooks explains how suffering plays an important role in our pursuit of happiness. He explains firstly that happiness is found through experiences and then, suffering can also be a motivation in our pursuit of happiness. In other words, suffering is a fearful but necessary gift to acquire happiness. This paper is related to motivation and emotion, two keys words to the pursuit of happiness (King, 2010).