Experiences In A Concentration Camp Analysis

Viktor Frankl’s personal narrative, “Experiences in a Concentration Camp” and Art Spiegelman's Maus I and II explore the psychological toll of life during and after concentration camps, including the unanticipated difficulties survivors faced after liberation. Frankl shows us that you must find meaning in suffering to psychologically survive through the camps. Anja, Vladek's wife, acted as his main means of survival, and his overall sense of purpose. When Anja commits suicide Vladek’s one motivation and good memory of the holocaust is lost, causing Vladek to psychologically die, and turn from a heroic character to within the camps to tragic character after liberation. Spiegelman’s graphic novels reveal that without a sense of purpose after Anya’s suicide, a vital part of Vladek dies, revealing how the power of purpose allowed him to survive the camps, but the absence of purpose made him succumb to the unanticipated continuation of suffering after liberation. This idea is shown when Anja causes Vladek to turn on a very strong “survival mode” which causes him to be a hero within the camps, but tragic outside of the camps. Vladek …show more content…
Frankl says, “ The prisoner who had lost faith in the future—his future —was doomed. With his loss of belief in the future, he also lost his spiritual hold; he let himself decline and became subject to mental and physical decay.” (page 36) The loss of belief in Frankl did not necessarily cause him a loss of physical well-being, but it did cause a sort of emotional death. We can see Anja’s death was the cause of a loss of faith for Vladek, because she was his one form of meaning within the camps. When she died, Vladek loses his one positive memory of the camps, turning the memory of the experience from a heroic moment to a mentally scarring moment that eats away Vladek in the