Loss of Humanity

Viktor Frankl's "Experiences in a Concentration Camp" is a moving, disturbing description of a prisoner's suffering during the Holocaust. Frankl seems to conclude that fundamentally, life in a concentration camp robbed him of his humanity. The author describes his experiences as a degeneration into a more primitive existence as instinctual desires supersede feelings of empathy for other prisoners and in a more physical sense, his body becomes more like a skeleton than a living being.

It's hard to compare Frankl and Lear due to the disparity of their situations, but Lear, like Frankl, feels that he loses his humanity. Stripped of his men, power, and respect, he empathizes with the poor and unprotected people during the storm. He even attempts to remove his own clothing in order to physically experience how primitive and animal-like he feels mentally and emotionally. Like Frankl, he finds that he has regressed into a more natural, inhuman state.

In a realization quite like Meursault's in The Stranger, Frankl finds that, although his physical, external state deteriorates in the concentration camp, his inner life and imagination intensifies. Lear is less successful in giving meaning to a simpler existence, perhaps because his suffering is primarily mental. However, when he considers the idea of being imprisoned with Cordelia, he too sees the potential to be happy even when living a primitive life in prison. Although Lear and Frankl's experiences are quite different, as they consider what emotionally and physically defines human existence, both discover that mental/internal and physical/external states do not necessarily parallel each other.