After reading Frankl's article about his times in a Jewish concentration camp during WWII, personally, I wasn't left with a lot of new information. Last year in my AP English class I wrote my junior theme on genocides which of course encompasses the Holocaust. Coming into this article I was already aware of the apathy of the prisoners in these camps, which I'm sure most people are aware of as well. Yet, the way Frankl wrote this article and the diction he uses to tell his stories is remarkable. He gives the non-apathetic reader a horrid image to resonate in their head.
On page 51 of the packet, Frankl describes a twelve-year-old frostbite patient saying "His toes had become frostbitten, and the doctor on duty picked off the gangrenous stumps with tweezers one by one." On the same page, he talks about a man dragging a corpse around by saying "the man with the corpse approached the steps. Wearily he dragged himself up. Then the body: first the feet, then the trunk, and finally-with and uncanny rattling noise- the head of the corpse bumped up the two steps." With many more examples in the article, Frankl uses this disturbing language to describe even more disturbing situations. But the only way his article can make an impact is if the reader isn't apathetic. They need to feel emotions to react to his stories. If not, then what is the point?
I think they do feel emotions, but their capacity to react to anything but themselves has been reduced due to their condition. Their humanity is never fully destroyed, but instead made minimum. They can only hold on to that last little shred, but they never truly lose it.
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