Symbolism Of Bread In Man's Search For Meaning

Famished inmates of Auschwitz’ concentration camp, including author Victor E. Frankl, sought bread above any other essential. Bread became solely a necessity. Prisoners of the Holocaust found themselves situated in a daily struggle to survive through the beatings, hunger, cold weather, worn rags and wrong-sized shoes, but more intensely through the psychological journey that each one of them had to undertake. Frankl notes that Man’s Search for Meaning is not another story in which the typical Holocaust story is described, but it rather provides the reader with a wide arrange of sui generis ideas. Frankl and his concept of logotherapy uncovers the symbolism found in the need for bread by every inmate. Such symbolism provides a magnificent illustration …show more content…
Atina Grossmann restates the opinion of anthropologist Margaret Mead, “Whenever a people feels that its food supply is in the hands of an authority, it tends to regard that authority as to some degree parental” (118). Although considerably negative, authoritative provision of bread rations provided security of the future and therefore, a sense of hope. Inmates lived with the belief that they would be provided with bread rations at a scheduled time, lessening the fact that they were agonizingly insufficient. One of Frankl’s inmates gives him an intriguing advice, “But one thing I beg of you; shave daily, if at all possible… even if you have to give your last piece of bread for it” (40). This prisoner emphasizes the importance of “the last piece of bread” for an Auschwitz inmate. Bread, as the ultimatum exchange for this individual, accentuates the importance of bread for the millions facing famine. Nonetheless, Frankl and other inmates rejected this advice and took the risk to look moderately older, rather than missing a midget-piece of bread. This in return allowed prisoners to keep that minute sense of hope, knowing that they were at last, keeping their own bodies from shutting