Summary Of Man's Search For Meaning

Written to reflect on the horrors faced during the Holocaust, Viktor E. Frankl analyzes the different mental states experienced by a concentration camp prisoner in his book Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl includes many of his own personal examples to support his theory of logotherapy which focuses on finding the meaning of man’s life. He demonstrates throughout his book that if a man has a reason to live and the right state of mind, he can endure any condition. In one section of his book, Frankl specifically concentrates on the impact fate makes in one’s life. To prove his theory that attempting to manipulate fate often seals it, Frankl includes an allusion, irony, and an anecdote in the section. At the end of the section, Frankl alludes
In the very beginning of his stay in Auschwitz, the each prisoner was asked a personal question, such as age or profession, and then sorted into a group with similar characteristics. Each prisoner is then asked another question, causing them to be resorted. This process is repeated multiple times, and eventually Frankl finds himself “among strangers who spoke unintelligible foreign languages.” Due to his unique set of traits, Frankl is moved from group to group in a precise order that is exclusive to him alone. Nonetheless, Frankl notes that he had become “quite unhappy” with his conditions. In the last selection, however, he “found himself back in the group that had been with [him] in the first hut” (54). Had he attempted to rejoin his original group sooner by changing his answers, he may not have been able to find them, resulting in him being placed in a group in which he would not have any similar traits, or he would have been severely punished by one of the guards. Instead, the specific sets of characteristics that fate had presented to him allowed him to reunite with his original group. Frankl answered the questions honestly, consequently permitting fate to take