The Grand Inquisitor On The Nature Of Man Analysis

Freedom and Life as we know it Freedom can mean a variety of different things to different people. To some, freedom may mean political equality, self-ownership, choosing what to believe in, or committing actions without restraint. However, how much freedom do the citizens of this world actually own? Fyodor Dostoyevsky gives his readers different perspectives about freedom in his story of The Grand Inquisitor on the Nature of Man, while Viktor Frankl insists that everyone has an inner freedom that no one can take away in his novel Man’s Search for Meaning.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky was born in Russia in 1821, when Russia operated in a serf and landlord system until 1861. Growing up, Dostoyevsky saw many political and social issues that affected …show more content…
The Grand Inquisitor is taking away the peoples’ freedoms and telling them they will be saved in the afterlife, when really he is working under Satan. However, the Grand Inquisitor is committing his actions through his love for the people. He believes that what he is doing is the right thing to do, but it is not the most moral thing to do. Christ is supposed to have lived a sinless life, so the Church could not have had a reason to arrest him. By arresting him for sins against mankind, it shows that the Church’s role is an effective way to guide human action, but not a way to encourage men to believe more strongly in religion. Christ and the Grand Inquisitor do not agree because they each have different values. Christ said no to the temptations to give mankind freedom to choose what is right and wrong, an important ability of man. However, the Grand Inquisitor values living in comfort, but the path is already chosen for the follower. The Grand Inquisitor thinks that rejecting the temptations is insisting that mankind rejects certain securities and that it is a burden on mankind to reject these securities. Although the Grand Inquisitor’s views on his love for mankind make sense, the kiss that Christ gives him changes the logic. The Grand Inquisitor tells Christ how Christ does not care for mankind by making them suffer, but his kiss …show more content…
Shock occurs during the initial admission into the concentration camp. The prisoners saw alarming sights during their train ride of “long stretches of several rows of barbed wire fences; water towers; searchlights; and long columns of ragged human figures” (Frankl 2006, 9). Frankl experiences feelings of horror during his first arrival of a concentration camp and had no way of preparing himself for what he was about to experience. Arriving at camp, many prisoners faced a delusion of reprieve by seeing some of the healthier inmates, but “little did we know then that they formed a specially chosen elite, who for years had been the receiving squad for new transports as they rolled into the station day after day” (Frankl 2006, 10). The prisoners were stripped of everything they had, even their names, and they soon realized that the camp was soon to be a lot worse than expected, leading to the next phase of apathy. Apathy was the longest phase for Frankl and the prisoners of camp. Apathy was used as a defense mechanism as Frankl says the prisoners were: “insensitive to daily and hourly beatings. By means of this insensibility the prisoner soon surrounded himself with a very necessary protective shell” (Franikl 2006, 23). If a prisoner exhibited any signs of anger or annoyance, they were beaten almost to death, so apathy was strongly enforced as a