Man's Search for Meaning

Viktor Frankl (1946)

A psychiatrist survived four Nazi concentration camps and emerged with a theory about why some people live when others give up — and it has nothing to do with strength.

EraContemporary / Post-WWII
Pages184
Difficulty★★☆☆☆ Moderate
AP Appearances4

Characters in Man's Search for Meaning

by Viktor Frankl · 1946 · 4 characters analyzed

Cast: Viktor Frankl, Tilly Frankl (née Grosser), The Senior Block Warden, Unnamed fellow prisoners.

Character Analysis

Uniquely occupies three roles simultaneously: the man who suffered, the psychiatrist who observed, and the philosopher who theorized. The triple perspective is the book's source of authority and its occasional weakness — Frankl can seem to have processed his experience too cleanly, too usefully. But this may be the point: the processing is itself the survival. He did not just live through the camps — he made something of them, and that making was already underway in the camps themselves.

Full analysis of Man's Search for Meaning