A man's search for meaning

A Man’s Search for Meaning Dr. Frankl elaborates on the psychological motives of both prisoners and himself in his novel A Man’s Search for Meaning. He starts by explaining, “It is easy for the outsider to get the wrong conception for camp life, a conception mingled with sentiment and pity. Little does he know the hard fight for existence which raged among prisoners” (22). Frankl gives insight on how difficult it was to live, but also to survive in the conditions of the camp. It shows how the men begin focus on merely surviving in such an environment, almost succumbing to their animalistic nature. He begins by recalling how after getting off the train that had brought them to the death camp, the men and women were stripped from their belongings and then separated into two lines were a man who would either point left or right. One way was the direction to the crematories, the other to a cleansing station.
“The symptom that characterizes the first phase is shock” (26). Frankl shows how the first stage of entering camp is shock, people who came to the camp had to give up all of their belongings and basically their identity. They were subject to all sorts of abuse and horrors, and it was very difficult to become accustomed to; however, it became such an ordinary sight after a while that prisoners eventually became detached from reality. Looking back over his entrance into Auschwitz, Frankl states, “if someone now asked of us the truth of Dostoevsky's statements that flatly defines man as a being who can get used to anything, we would reply 'yes, a man can get used to anything, but do not ask us how” (36). He also states that, “The thought of suicide was entertained by everyone, if only for a short time. It was born of the hopelessness of the situations, constant danger of death looming over us daily and hourly, and the closeness of the deaths suffered by many of the others....The prisoner of Auschwitz, in the first phase of shock, did not fear death. Even the