Mulligan Darcey Eng 102 Kahler Final Essay The noogenic disorder is one that can affect virtually anyone. If a person is placed into a situation where their will and determination will be tested it is simple to lose your way. The idea that losing your hope and not knowing your own meaning is something you can not succumb to, but if you do it will be your downfall. Victor Frankl calls this a noogenic theory and it can be seen in roughly every work of literature read this semester. A work of literature where I found this theory strongly present throughout was "Hills like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemmingway. This short story is about a man and a woman debating whether they should keep their unborn child or abort it. The woman seems particularly torn while the man seems to voice his opinion sternly but pathetically try to sympathize with her. The woman feels that if she has the child she could lose the love and affection of her man; they could lose all the trips around the world they would take and all of the carelessness that is lives their presently. The man doesn't want to compete with a child for his woman's affection, he wants to able to pick up and just take off and have no worries of the days to come. Frankls' theory comes into play when the woman is debating if this child is going to make her life better. There is a part of her that wants to settle down and create a family and a stable life for herself. She feels that if she has a baby they have to settle, they have to be a family. In her putting all of her hope and the future child she is setting herself up for hurt and disappointment. If you are to rely on something besides yourself for hope and meaning then when that thing doesn't come through you're alone and hopeless bringing you back to where you started. When you lose something you invest so much of yourself into when it's gone you lose yourself. With this woman already seeing so much hope and promise is this unborn child, if an abortion is decided, this woman loses everything she invested in. She loses apart of herself along with the unborn child.