Food, water, shelter, and...?

Frankl's recollection of his time spent in concentration camps is one of the more disturbing things we've read for class. It's not even in the graphic imagery of illness or frost bitten toes that gets to the reader, but his description of what the camps did to the soul. He goes through the stages of what it was like to be in such an environment. What got to me was when he illustrated a train ride from one camp to another. He writes that he felt like a dead man returning to where he grew up only to find a ghost town. It's nightmarish to imagine what they looked like physically, being starved and overworked, but mentally, he writes that it was as if he was already dead.

It's very difficult to write an analysis of such a story. Frankl makes the Reader feel his words and be able to see what he saw. Maybe it's not the best thing to compare his very real nightmare to a work of fiction, but there are quite a few comparisons and contractions to be made from Frankl's writing to that of Shakespeare and Camus.

In all three works, the one thing that kept the main characters going was the thought or presence of something they loved. Although Meursault does't profess his love for much, the memory of his apartment and just thinking about physical items burned through his plentiful time in prison. For Lear, who doesn't end up spending much time imprisoned at all, having Cordelia with him changed everything. He explains to her how he believes they'll be very happy, only having each other. Lastly, for Frankl, it's a slightly different story. He, like Lear, has someone who he holds very dear. He does not have the luxury that Meursault has of not having much of a connection to the outside world besides physical pleasures like swimming, smoking or sex. Unlike Lear, he does not have his beloved near him. He doesn't even know where his wife is or if she's alive. However, it is still the thought of her that keeps Frankl going. Throughout being slowly starved to death and tortured daily, Frankl keeps his wife in his thoughts and has conversations with her while working. Love may not be the only thing that keeps people semi-sane in restricting and unlivable environments, as Meursault supposedly only needed a days worth of memories, but it sure doesn't hurt. I'd imagine there were quite a few men there who didn't have wives to think of, but they probably thought of parents, siblings, somebody they saw on the street once whose face they remember, a pet, etc. The thought of something you care about if even just a tiny amount keeps people feeling human.