Mans Search for Meaning - Essay Example

This book revealed what human beings are capable of (when) placed under enormous strain and are forced to deal with circumstances most people never have to endure. I believe that under normal circumstances these individuals would have felt that they had certain limitations on their abilities in dealing with difficult circumstances such as these, until they were placed in a situation where their actions depended on their very existence and survival. I found it fascinating that these prisoners had different ways of dealing with their life altering events.

They took notice of the beauty of the land around them, they admired the sunset. They gazed at nature as if it were a piece of art.(could you recombine these three sentences into one, better flowing sentence) Humor was another way they would get through their difficult days. The prisoners would often discuss rumors about the military actions taking place. Although these were mostly rumor it gave them hope and a reason for not giving up. Some of them turned to religion as a way to cope with their difficult days as prisoners. . These individuals repeatedly beat the prisoners and treated them as inferior in an effort to gain the trust of their captors in return for preferential treatment.

They would try anything to help them forget their current circumstances. At one point in the book the author mentioned that the man sleeping next to him was having a nightmare. He thought about attempting to wake him but decided that any nightmare could never be worse than the reality so he let him sleep. This statement was really made me understand the difficulties these men faced on a daily basis. It would have been very easy for many of these prisoners to end their lives and stop the pain, but the desire to survive in hopes that they would be liberated overrode and(is this the word you want) desire to do so.

The horrors that these individuals witnessed in a normal society were appalling. It is interesting of how the human mind works and these atrocities actually became an everyday part of life. When individuals died they would take their possessions in an attempt to upgrade their clothing, shoes. (do you think you could clean this paragraph up a little bit) The guards did everything they could to break the spirits of every individual imprisoned in these camps. They did not refer to them by name, only by the numbers tattooed on their bodied and sewn into their clothes.

The German soldiers took all possessions away and beat and tortured them in an effort to make them feel sub-human. The soldiers also referred to them as pigs which this was another means of de-humanizing them. The author mentioned the times when they would have to make decisions that may decide your(their) fate. One example was when he had to make a decision to either stay at the camp where he was located or join others