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Petra X's Reviews > Man's Search for Meaning
Man's Search for Meaning
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Petra X's review
bookshelves: 2013-reviews, history, philosophy-religion, psycho-neurology-crime, reviewed
Jan 14, 2013
bookshelves: 2013-reviews, history, philosophy-religion, psycho-neurology-crime, reviewed
How is it possible to write dispassionately of life in a concentration camp in such a way as to engender great feeling in the reader? This is how Frankl dealt with his experience of those terrible years. The dispassionate writing makes the horrors of the camp extremely distressing, more so than writing that is more emotionally involved. It is almost reportage. The first half of the book is equal in its telling to The Diary of a Young Girl in furthering our understanding of those dreadful times.
There are occasional glimmers of humanity from the Germans. These are so small that rather than illuminate any basic goodness, they cast further into the shadows the terror of living in a place and time where death might be a beating or a shot to the head at any moment. There are also stories of the depths that some of the Jewish victims would sink to in what they would do to stay alive themselves. It made me think that rather than condemn these people for becoming tools of the Nazis, what would I do faced with death or the chance to stay alive a little longer and maybe save family or friends.
7 stars, golden stars for this half of the book.
The second half is about Frankl's psychotherapeutic methods and lost me in boredom. I did read this in its entirety but it wouldn't have spoiled the book, or my appreciation of the genius retelling and brilliant writing of the first half, if I hadn't.
There are occasional glimmers of humanity from the Germans. These are so small that rather than illuminate any basic goodness, they cast further into the shadows the terror of living in a place and time where death might be a beating or a shot to the head at any moment. There are also stories of the depths that some of the Jewish victims would sink to in what they would do to stay alive themselves. It made me think that rather than condemn these people for becoming tools of the Nazis, what would I do faced with death or the chance to stay alive a little longer and maybe save family or friends.
7 stars, golden stars for this half of the book.
The second half is about Frankl's psychotherapeutic methods and lost me in boredom. I did read this in its entirety but it wouldn't have spoiled the book, or my appreciation of the genius retelling and brilliant writing of the first half, if I hadn't.
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Reading Progress
January 14, 2013
–
Started Reading
January 14, 2013
– Shelved
February 17, 2013
– Shelved as:
philosophy-religion
February 17, 2013
– Shelved as:
2013-reviews
February 17, 2013
– Shelved as:
history
February 17, 2013
– Shelved as:
psycho-neurology-crime
February 18, 2013
–
Finished Reading
May 5, 2015
– Shelved as:
reviewed
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It is a cliche but that thing about walking a mile in someone's shoes is true when faced with really extreme behaviour.
Absolutely and as I have seen other people say on threads here when 'cliche' comes up; it is only a cliche because there is truth in it.
I suppose though that one of the reasons we read books like this is to know what it was like as clearly as possible since we cannot and would not walk in their shoes. Perhaps that's the point of memoirs of events or adventures.
Yep. I read somewhere a quote from Salman Rushdie where he says how novels enable us to meet people from whomk we might normally flee in our daily lives. It enables us to encounter and, to an extent, empathize with the different or the, from our limited experience, alien.
I think that's absolutely true. Some characters, like some people, stay in your mind too. Madame Bovary for one.
ooh clever cross reference to our previous conversation.............show off
Thank you, but no it wasn't like that. I think that when you have regular discussions on book reviews with the same people, those people become friends and the comments become two-level. On the first level is sticking-to-the-point and on the second level is the ongoing conversation.
NO don't worry i am only joking I think you are totally right about Emma Bovary adn I too like the ongoing conversation, keep it coming/liking/cross-referencing
Glad you liked it Petra. For a book lover, this is even more powerful because it can be read under the light of an author so much in love with his book that he would refuse to die before seeing it published, even under the worst possible circumstances. I personally found the logotherapy concepts intriguing. As someone who sees all psychology and psychiatry as elegant BS, I still found his methods very creative, and based on the very true assumption that words are the coin with which we do business with everyone around us, and ultimately with ourselves.
Thank you for this excellent review. I had read Elie Wiesel, as well as Anne Frank. Also 'The Sunflower' by Simon Wiesenthal, wherein he was faced with the dilemma of granting 'forgiveness'to a dying German soldier in a hospital or possible execution. In the end Wiesenthal posed the ethical question to various writers, and philosophers as to which was the proper response: Grant forgiveness as a
Jew to a dying Catholic soldier who has confessed?,,by what right could he do this? ( having trouble writing in this little box),, anyway it is a great book,,and I look forward to reading Frankl,,thank you
had confessed and
Thank you. I think one of the best holocaust book I've read is The Meeting: An Auschwitz Survivor Confronts an SS Physician. The woman isn't Jewish which makes it a little more detached and the doctor might well be lying. Poses and - depending on what you think of the doctor - answers some moral questions.
I think based on this review I'll just read the first half.
Sounds like there are similarities to the Gulag Archipelago set. Solzhenitsyn buries the read in detail, the books droned on and on. What happened there was bad and needed documenting. Whether 2000+ pages where needed--that is a different matter.
Not quite like Solzhenitsyn really. Frankl is dry, dispassionate, brief. Solzhenitsyn can never keep himself out of his books, except perhaps One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Or to me that's so.
Mark wrote: "It made me think that rather than condemn these people for become tools of the Nazis, what would I do faced with death or the chance to stay alive a little longer and maybe save family or friends..."
There is a movie called the Grey Zone which focused on a small group of prisoners in a concentration camp that disposed of the dead bodies. One character raised the question what would humans do to survive and the answer was "literally anything." I liked it because unlike many films/books about the holocaust it didn't sugarcoat it with a basic message about the goodness of humanity.
On the other hand, although it plunged me into a several month depression I liked the book The Survivor by Terrence De Pres, which made the point that most of the survivors were not the people who collaborated or otherwise helped the Nazis. The survivors were the type of people who would share extra food and receive extra food etc. from other prisoners when they had some.
Each of my parents were the only members of their families survive so my surrogate family was a group of Holocaust survivors. With a couple of exceptions, these were extremely damaged people, but every one of them would give you the shirt off their back.
When I was young and on a kibbutz for the summer I met many concentration camp survivors. Most of them were extremely damaged as you say. Not all though. The worst of them were two men, not Jewish but real heroes of the Resistance, one was Dutch, the other I forget. The cobbler and the gardener. They really had very few periods in their day of normality away from screaming pain and disabling depression, sometimes they didn't even surface at all for days.
Petra, in rereading this thread, I realized that I forgot to compliment you on the excellent review. I agree with you about the logotherapy and that nothing he could have written could in any way diminish the power and value of the first part of the book. Most of the survivors I know and knew were or became functional, and a few seemed to be among the most mentally healthy people I ever met. The main message I got out of book was that in order to survive, one must find a meaning in life. A very valuable lesson that helped me through a very tough part of my life.
Thank you. One of my favourite quotes, which I have on my profile is just about that, about finding meaning in life.“Human beings do not live forever, Reuven. We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. So it may be asked what value is there to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye?
I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life.
It is hard work to fill one's life with meaning. That I do not think you understand yet. A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest when I am no longer here.”
― Chaim Potok, The Chosen
An all time favorite of mine!
Mara wrote: "An all time favorite of mine!"Mine too. But only the first half. I still couldn't give the second half more than 1 star. I tried to read it again recently and I cannot get through this logotherapy thing at all.
My farrier, the guy who trims my horses' hooves, suggested this book to me because we were discussing a lot of books we've read lately. So I came here to see what my friends had to say about it. Wonderful review, Petra!
MarilynW wrote: "My farrier, the guy who trims my horses' hooves, suggested this book to me because we were discussing a lot of books we've read lately...."Thank you :-) It is so worth it. It stands along with Elie Wiesel's Night and Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz as the best books about concentration camps in Nazi Germany. All of them are short, all of them are without much descriptive passages and all should never have needed to be written.
Petra X wishes catnip worked on people wrote: Thank you :-) It is so worth it. It stands along with Elie Wiesel's Night and Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz as the best books about concentration camps in Nazi Germany. All of them are short, all of them are without much descriptive passages and all should never have needed to be written."Ditto your last sentence and thank you for the links!
The kapos made the extermination run smoother.
Joe wrote: "The kapos made the extermination run smoother."That's absolutely not true. The exterminations, which sounds lke what you do to vermin which is what the Nazis wanted everyone to think Jews were, the murders happened first, the infamous selections coming off the trains were either sent to the gas chambers or to live until they worked themselves to death. Further selections took place at roll call which were of course run by Nazi officers and were usually shooting or beating to death, never gassing.
The kapos were the prisoner self administrators, sometimes Jews, but sometimes political prisoners, gays, gypsies or just ordinary prisoners who were imprisoned in the camps (and the violent ones were the favoured kapos) who actually ran where they lived. Outside of that, like work, it was the Nazi officers who ran things.
Great review. This was a fabulous read for me as well. I am in awe of those who can find hope or inner peace in the most horrendous of circumstances. At first the second half was a little off-putting but as I found myself getting into it...I actually liked the idea of analysis that focuses on the future instead of the past. The first half sits up there with NIGHT as some have mentioned already.
Chris wrote: " I am in awe of those who can find hope or inner peace in the most horrendous of circumstances. At first the second half was a little off-putti..."I wonder if they did at the time, or only in retrospect did they have inner peace? It's awful hard to be positive when you are really, really hungry.
You wrote a great review!!!!
Stacey B wrote: "You wrote a great review!!!!"Thank you, it is, to me, one of the three great books about the Holocause. All short and along with Elie Weisel's Night and Primo Levi's If This Is a Man all have a depth that produces emotion, but are not full of emotion themselves. I think that kind of writing makes the great and also very easy to review.
I stand by my comment about Kapos because they helped the Nazis more than the prisoners. I may be mistaken, but there were some Jews (policemen?) in the Ghetto who helped round up people for the trains.
Nazis "assigned" the Kapos, who were prisoners themselves.
Joe wrote: "I but there were some Jews (policemen?) in the Ghetto who helped round up people for the trains...."That is true. It must have been hell trying to decide who they could protect and who not to. What a position to people put in.
Stacey B wrote: "Nazis "assigned" the Kapos, who were prisoners themselves."The Nazis were good at all kinds of cruelty and torture. It's as if they were all psychopaths with no feeling at all and taking pleasure, as they did, in seeing what pain they could inflict in any way, before they killed people.
yes.. having prisoners kill there own, jewish or not was part of their torture-
Stacey B wrote: "yes.. having prisoners kill there own, jewish or not was part of their torture-"There was a man, the gardener on a kibbutz I went to as a teenager. He was not Jewish, part of the Dutch resistance. The Nazis killed his kids in front of him. Pulled out his finger and toe nails, doused him in gasoline, set him on fire and put it out. He didn't work much, he screamed a lot. He had terrible visions I think. The cruelty of the guys who did that to him is unimaginable. That someone would even think up tortures like that.
I worked in the garden, sifting stones from the soil (really) but mostly he didn't work so I sat and read.
Thanks for the great nightmares Im going to have tonight :)
Stacey B wrote: "Thanks for the great nightmares Im going to have tonight :)"We've all been having them collectively for a couple of thousand years now. Not every night, but often enough.
Yikes. I don’t think I can bring myself to read this. I read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich when I was a child, and the horrors depicted in that book have stayed with me for the rest of my life.
Mona wrote: "Yikes. I don’t think I can bring myself to read this. I read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich when I was a child, and the horrors depicted in that book have stayed with me for the rest ..."It isn't that sort of book. It's cool, introspective and non-emotional. It's so worth it, or Primo Levi, or Elie Weisel. None of them are dramatic or try to engender feelings in the reader. It's well worth reading, but I respect your opinion that you wouldn't like it.
‘Dispassionately writing’. Brilliant.
Thanks for this Petra and yep, that sentence above quoted is always the thing I keep in the back of my mind whenever I get tempted to hold forth, from my place of arrogant safety, against people placed in horrendously unimaginable situations. Not just those you speak of here but in so many heartbreaking moments of history.