Probably the most obvious comparison to the Frankl excerpt would be Elie Wiesel's night as they both deal with the horrors and atrocities of the holocaust. Both pieces also discuss the the emotional response to such a horrifying reality. When reading the excerpt from Frankl, I was struck by his experience of becoming apathetic as a way to deal with his reality. I connected this to a statement that a classmate made when I was reading Wiesel's Night in 8th grade. My classmate stated "I know that the holocaust was terrible, but why does it not seem that bad in night". This statement really stuck with me as at first I thought it was a kind of horrible thing to say about someone's experience during the holocaust, but know I think I understand it. In Night, the language used was very plain and not particularly emotional. But I think that was because like Frankl, Wiesel developed apathy to block out the horrors he was experiencing during the holocaust. I also believe that is what makes the book so disturbing, that not only would a group of people be systematically murdered by other people, but the people who were exposed to this became normalized to this kind of behavior, something truly disturbing about human nature.
One of the greatest abilities of human beings is our ability to adopt to vastly different situations and environments. But this is also our most wicked curse. As shown in Germany, and much of Europe during the second world war, the Jewish people were murdered in the millions. Many people who were not Jewish, but knew about what was going on chose to be apathetic towards the plight of the Jews and stand by as they suffered. The people who were interred in the concentration camps, as shown in both the Frankl piece and Wiesel's Night also became apathetic in response to their own suffering and those around them. I am not blaming concentration camp survivors for losing empathy, I understand that was a way to survive a terrifying situation, but is still scary.: that people (on both sides) can lose empathy so easily.
My blog post is nearly identical to yours. I too, wrote about the impact of Night and Frankl's excerpt. I believe that texts such as these two are essential to our existence and learning. Through novel's such as these we learn several lessons. One obvious lesson is treat people the way that you would want to be treated. A second lesson is to not take anything for granted, because you do not know what you have until it is gone. These novel's are crucial to helping us move forward as time passes, so we do not let ourselves be a bystander of any time of violent treatment.
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