Write a Comparative and reflective essay of 3 pages on two of the following accounts of the Auschwitz experience: Frankl. V., Mens Search for Meaning, Washington Square, New York, 1985 and Levi, P., Survival in Auschwitz, Colier, New York, 1961.

Survival of the fittest seemed to be the game in concentration the camp , Levi noticed (Camon , 1989 ,

. 20 . In to survive , Levi noted that the prisoners themselves engaged in a fight for inner hierarchy and economics (Camon , 1989 ,

. 21 ) marked by conditions where there is little solidarity , and most comrades treated one another as competitors in their quest to survive

A Comparative Reflection

Both books actually dwelt on the overarching theme of survival . In fact both of them are recollections based on the stories that made (or unmade

, for those who did not make it ) them survive the horrors of being shipped to a concentration camp . But while both works are glued by the same theme , their type of approaches and manner of presentation are very different

Key to Frankl 's book is to notice how Frankl seemed to have known (or predicted if it is permitted to be called ) who among his comrades would survive the Holocaust or not . Frankl called it the fulfilling meaning of the moment (Frankl , 1997 ,

. 51 . His book maintained that those who chose to meet any sort of tragedy - whatever its intensity - with a choice to put meaning in it , would never run out of the reason to live As Frankl would himself argue : to see beyond the misery of the situation to the potential of discovering a meaning in it , and thus turn an apparently meaningless suffering into a genuine human achievement (Frankl , 1997 ,

. 51 ) is precisely what made a prisoner of Auschwitz survive . Surviving in Auschwitz meanwhile offers the same theme of survival in a less optimistic tone . If Frankl was interested in showing the power that lies in the human spirit , Levi was keen in presenting the ugly side of the human drive to survive . Levi 's...