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Definition of Simile
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like" or "as," but can also... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often... read full definition
Experiences in a Concentration Camp
Explanation and Analysis—The Guards' Commands:
When Frankl first introduces shock as the initial stage of the prisoners’ psychological reactions, he includes an important instance of auditory imagery and simile. His admission to the concentration camp in Part I is met with the distinctive and unfamiliar shouts of the guards:
The initial silence was interrupted by shouted commands. We were to hear those rough, shrill tones from then on, over and over again in all the camps. Their sound was almost like the last cry of a victim, and yet there was a difference. It had a rasping hoarseness, as if it came from the throat of a man who had to keep shouting like that, a man who was being murdered again and again.
This passage features an extended instance of auditory imagery: Frankl explains the intonation of the guards’ commands using a series of comparisons and similes. However, he struggles to capture the nature of their voices. He compares their shouts to the cries of a dying victim, then of a shouting man, then of one forced to undergo death again and again. This sequence of imperfect comparisons shows how Frankl cannot entirely make clear sense of these unfamiliar sounds and must continually self-correct his descriptions. The inability to definitively describe the noise demonstrates the extent of Frankl’s shock: at the moment of his admission to the concentration camp, his disbelief toward his condition comes to light in his inability to understand what would become permanent in his new world.
Related Themes:
Explanation and Analysis—Comparisons to Animals:
Part I of Man's Search for Meaning includes numerous similes comparing the treatment of prisoners to the treatment of animals. These similes occur often enough to become a significant motif across the book.
Frankl uses one such simile when reflecting on an encounter with a camp guard:
Instead, he playfully picked up a stone and threw it at me. That, to me, seemed the way to attract the attention of a beast [...] a creature with which you have so little in common that you do not even punish it.
In this instance, Frankl likens the apathetic treatment of the guard towards him as one would regard an animal. This comparison intends to broadly characterize the relations between guards and prisoners that govern the camp, making it clear that the guards routinely dehumanize the prisoners and view them as "beast[s]." This comparison hearkens to the Nazi ideology that was foundational to the concentration camps, which infamously portrayed Jewish people and other minorities as subhuman vermin who deserved to be extinguished.
Frankl continues this simile in a second example describing the death marches:
Just like sheep that crowd timidly into the center of a herd, each of us tried to get into the middle of our formations.
In total, these comparisons uncover the dehumanizing treatment faced by camp prisoners, a treatment resembling that of animals. As a motif, however, an additional purpose for these comparisons comes to light. After the stone-throwing episode, Frankl describes how a foreman’s head was shaped like “a pig’s head.” These animal similes not only describe the prisoners but the guards as well, participating in the book’s central theme about morality. Throughout Man’s Search For Meaning, Frankl repeats that ethical behavior is not limited to a strict binary between prisoners vs. guards: moral and immoral behavior appears across both groups, and the circumstances of the concentration camps merely uncover one’s essential nature rather than change it.
Related Themes:
