The smell of flowers filled the hospital waiting room, my mom and aunt talked, as me and my sister watched the T.V. Their annoyed faces and the low energy suggested that they were tired and wanted to go home. A bright red screen filled up the dimly lit room “Mom, look, the news!”, me and my sister both shouted excitedly. They both turned their heads quickly and gave their attention to the news report. “Oh my God, what happened?”. My mom gasped as live footage from the Century Sixteen Theater popped up on the screen. My mom quickly pushed me and my sister close, she held onto both of us, her heart pounded against her chest if she was scared of the people around us.
Could it have been because she was terrified of the realization that she will eventually have to let us go into the real world? In the Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank, Frank takes readers on a long difficult journey to womanhood, a journey in which one can go back to her simple days as a thirteen-year-old girl and witness her life completely change in two years. By confiding everything into her diary, she softened up to something/one that allowed her to speak her true mind. From writing about friends, drama, and boys to writing about war and her own beliefs. Anne Frank grew from a young girl to a young woman, using her diary as an outlet to channel her creativity and as a substitute for experiences that were denied by the war. Throughout her diary, the fight for humanity’s future is a big topic of discussion and with Frank’s courage and strength, one may consider her a key player in the fight for change. While many may see Anne Frank as a girl with many friends and a good home, Frank felt as if she had no true friend in the world. No one to have a meaningful conversation with. No one to share her ups and downs with. No one to encourage her. Frank’s motive to write came from the hope of confiding everything into something/one that she could not confide into her friends and family (Frank 6/12/1942). Proving that this gift is not just any other gift for Frank. She sees the diary as a best friend, a friend who listens, and gives off no remarks whatsoever.
Even during the war, Frank claims that “Kitty’s” patience is a key factor as to why she always winds up coming back to it (Frank 11/7/1942). Whenever Frank goes back to Kitty with news or drama, she never forgets to mention that Kitty is the only thing that would understand, suggesting that Frank is just a young girl who feels misunderstood by the world. Ultimately, the exigence for “The Diary of a Young Girl” can be said to be Frank’s longing for a true friend who listens and understands. Often, Frank reminds Kitty about two important lessons in her two-years-worth of entries: war is inevitable and love comes and goes. As Frank states on the 5/3/1944, “I don’t believe the war is simply the work of politicians and capitalists. Oh no, the common man is every bit as guilty; otherwise, people and nations would have rebelled long ago! There’s a destructive urge in people, the urge to rage, murder and kill. And until all of humanity, without exception, undergoes a metamorphosis, wars will continue to be waged, and everything that has been carefully built up, cultivated and grown will be cut down and destroyed, only to start allover again!” In this example, Frank is amazed at people’s failure to understand that the purpose of war does not exist. Instead, it is caused by human hatred and violence two traits that lie deep within our human nature. Edith Frank struggled with living up to Anne Frank’s expectations, giving her no choice but to let her husband take over as the role model for Frank. The second Edith Frank had realized how fast the love was gone broke her heart. Once Anne Frank realized that her coldness does affect her mother, she felt guilty but also helpless because she could not pretend to love someone she does not love (Frank 4/2/43). After being consistently pushed around, made fun of, and not meeting Frank’s expectations Frank’s love for her mother is slowly fades away into nothing, leaving her dad as her only true love.
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As shown above, two big themes that Anne Frank shared were: war is inevitable and love comes and goes. Of course, these two themes both have an impact on Frank; justifying Frank’s decision to add them. Mike Rosenbaum suggests that loneliness and fear may be connected to Frank’s repeated talks about war, claiming that they are effects of war, in the sense that one thing leads to another (www.enotes.com). Seeing that war’s inevitability to begin causes Frank to say goodbye to good friends and family, loneliness can be a noticeable problem for Frank at the beginning of the book, those late nights of uncertainty slowly spawn fear itself into Frank’s life and millions more. War had Frank just where it needed her to be. In a state of fear and disarray. “I cling to Father because my contempt of Mother is growing daily and it’s only through him that I’m able to retain the last ounce of family feeling I have left. He doesn’t understand that I sometimes need to vent my feelings for Mother…yet Mother, with all her shortcomings, is tougher for me to deal with. I don’t know how I should act. I can’t very well confront her with her carelessness, her sarcasm and her hard-heartedness, yet I can’t continue to take the blame for everything.” (11/7/1942). The constant let downs from Edith Frank left Anne Frank reasonably upset and disappointed in her mother. Her inability to connect with her daughter shows that love’s effects on Frank are not to be ignored since they are the reason why she took her love for her mother and gave it to her dad. In short, the effects of these two themes (war is inevitable and love comes and goes) on Frank were big lessons that she had to overcome before she could share the big picture itself. A question that may arise from all this may be: what was the purpose? Why did she write in her diary? In her entry on 3/29/1944, it was revealed in a broadcast that a collection of diaries and letters would be set in play after the war.
After hearing this, Frank’s interest in publishing her book soared, hoping to share her side of the war and how it affected her life and others. It can be assumed that Anne Frank’s purpose for not including people’s real names in her more recent versions of the diary was because she had intentions of publishing them if it was not for her sudden death. Frank states, “Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me…paper does have more patience, and since I’m not planning to let anyone else read…now I’m back to the point that prompted me to keep a diary in the first place: I don’t have a friend…” (6/20/42). Here, Frank talks to Kitty as if it were a friend, a friend who just listens and helps Frank escape from a world where being misunderstood at such a young age was frowned upon. Overall, Frank’s purpose for writing in her was because “Kitty” was her best friend who she trusted dearly and because she wanted to share her experiences with future generations.
Loop back The smell of flowers filled the hospital waiting room, my mom and aunt talked, as me and my sister watched the T.V. Their annoyed faces and the low energy suggested that they were tired and wanted to go home. A bright red screen filled up the dimly lit room “Mom, look, the news!”, me and my sister both shouted excitedly. They both turned their heads quickly and gave their attention to the news report. “Oh my God, what happened?”. My mom gasped as live footage from the Century Sixteen Theater popped up on the screen. My mom quickly pushed me and my sister close, she held onto both of us, her heart pounded against her chest if she was scared of the people around us. Could it have been because she was terrified of the realization that she will eventually have to let us go into the real world?
References
- History.com – Anne Frank
- Anne Frank House
- Biography.com – Anne Frank
- The New York Times – Anne Frank
- NPR Books – Anne Frank
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum – Anne Frank
- Jewish Virtual Library – Anne Frank
- Britannica Kids – Anne F r ank
