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Similes
Experiences in a Concentration Camp
Explanation and Analysis:
Man's Search for Meaning mixes a philosophical or literary style with a more scientific, objective one. This vacillation between styles shows how many disciplines and schools of thought influence Frankl's thinking.
From the start of the book, Frankl relies on stylistic features that are characteristic of scientific literature and empirical methods. For example, in Part I, Frankl identifies precisely three stages—shock, apathy, and depersonalization—in the prisoners' psychological reactions. Moreover, in Part II, he divides the fundamental concepts of logotherapy into organized chapters, presenting this half of the book as a treatise on his psychotherapeutic doctrine. But Frankl often deviates from this scientific language in favor of a more literary style. This happens when he revisits a specific memory, especially one of great emotional or traumatic weight. For example, Frankl describes the moment a fellow prisoner reveals to him his friend’s death:
A hand pointed to the chimney a few hundred yards off, which was sending a column of flame up into the grey sky of Poland. It dissolved into a sinister cloud of smoke.
In this instance, Frankl uses imagery to portray the horrors of the concentration camp—namely, the execution and cremation of prisoners like Frankl’s friend, whose remains are implied to be burning out of the chimney and floating into the sky. By describing his firsthand experience with a poignant image in this way, using literary language rather than detached scientific language, Frankl makes the brutal reality of life (and death) in a concentration camp all the more sensorially and emotionally evocative for the reader.
Another stylistic move which participates in a more philosophical style is the use of chiasmus and inversion. Frankl often uses a reversal of syntax in his rhetoric in order to present an unexpected truth before the reader. For example, in Part I, Frankl aptly demonstrates the prisoners’ change in mindset in an instance of chiasmus (a literary device in which the structure of one clause is reversed in another clause):
With the end of uncertainty came the uncertainty of the end.
He uses rhetorical reversal again in Part II to highlight the need to subvert one’s questions about the meaning of life:
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.
These rhetorical structures serve to point out the complexities and contradictions that are inherent to suffering (for instance, by acknowledging that the end of one uncertainty only creates another uncertainy), engaging both Frankl’s literary style and his desire to uncover psychological truth. This mixing of styles across Man’s Search For Meaning shows how the book spans a variety of genres and disciplines and appeals to both logic and emotion.
Related Themes:
Logotherapy in a Nutshell: The Meaning of Life
Explanation and Analysis:
Man's Search for Meaning mixes a philosophical or literary style with a more scientific, objective one. This vacillation between styles shows how many disciplines and schools of thought influence Frankl's thinking.
From the start of the book, Frankl relies on stylistic features that are characteristic of scientific literature and empirical methods. For example, in Part I, Frankl identifies precisely three stages—shock, apathy, and depersonalization—in the prisoners' psychological reactions. Moreover, in Part II, he divides the fundamental concepts of logotherapy into organized chapters, presenting this half of the book as a treatise on his psychotherapeutic doctrine. But Frankl often deviates from this scientific language in favor of a more literary style. This happens when he revisits a specific memory, especially one of great emotional or traumatic weight. For example, Frankl describes the moment a fellow prisoner reveals to him his friend’s death:
A hand pointed to the chimney a few hundred yards off, which was sending a column of flame up into the grey sky of Poland. It dissolved into a sinister cloud of smoke.
In this instance, Frankl uses imagery to portray the horrors of the concentration camp—namely, the execution and cremation of prisoners like Frankl’s friend, whose remains are implied to be burning out of the chimney and floating into the sky. By describing his firsthand experience with a poignant image in this way, using literary language rather than detached scientific language, Frankl makes the brutal reality of life (and death) in a concentration camp all the more sensorially and emotionally evocative for the reader.
Another stylistic move which participates in a more philosophical style is the use of chiasmus and inversion. Frankl often uses a reversal of syntax in his rhetoric in order to present an unexpected truth before the reader. For example, in Part I, Frankl aptly demonstrates the prisoners’ change in mindset in an instance of chiasmus (a literary device in which the structure of one clause is reversed in another clause):
With the end of uncertainty came the uncertainty of the end.
He uses rhetorical reversal again in Part II to highlight the need to subvert one’s questions about the meaning of life:
Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.
These rhetorical structures serve to point out the complexities and contradictions that are inherent to suffering (for instance, by acknowledging that the end of one uncertainty only creates another uncertainy), engaging both Frankl’s literary style and his desire to uncover psychological truth. This mixing of styles across Man’s Search For Meaning shows how the book spans a variety of genres and disciplines and appeals to both logic and emotion.
Related Themes:
