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Definition of Imagery
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines from Robert Frost's poem "After Apple-Picking" contain imagery that engages... read full definition
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines from Robert Frost's poem "After... read full definition
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines... 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.
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Explanation and Analysis—The Latrines:
When Frankl uses visual imagery to describe the concentration camp latrines in Part I:
Between the huts in the camp lay pure filth, and the more one worked to clear it away, the more one had to come in contact with it. [...] If, as usually happened, some of the excrement splashed into his face during its transport over bumpy fields, any sign of disgust by the prisoner or any attempt to wipe off the filth would only be punished with a blow from a Capo.
This image presents in detail what the duties of one forced to clean the latrines entailed: Frankl describes the layout of the huts and the latrines between them as well as the excrement that soiled the prisoners'. Importantly, this passage appears immediately before Frankl introduces the second state of a prisoner’s psychological reaction to being in a concentration camp: apathy.
In presenting this scene before his explanation of apathy, Frankl emphasizes how a prisoner would feel unmoved by what has been described above. But the visual imagery of this passage portrays a rather inhumane scene, thereby heightening the contrast between the reader's revulsion and the prisoners’ lack of emotional response. By appealing to the reader’s own visual sense of the latrines, Frankl makes one understand the extent of the prisoners’ apathy.
Related Themes:
