An Instagram for Anne Frank

https://www.instagram.com/annefrank29_/

I created an Instagram account for Anne Frank with the handle “annefrank29_,” the 29 representing her birth year.  In the beginning of the novel, she talks about how the boys love her, but once they get too close, she shuts them down completely. She also says how she only wants one guy, and that guy is Peter Wessel. This is when she is a young girl and her immaturity is showing. The second image uploaded to her Instagram page is of an owl saying, “Don’t wanna be owl by myself.” This image represents a dark time for Anne when she was in hiding, she was being ridiculed by her family for her immature behavior, having issues with her mother, and was very down on herself. The third image, “Maturing is realizing how many things don’t require your comment.” This shows how Anne has matured by the end of the story. She writes about how much she realizes that her time spent in hiding changed her. This is also literal, because she physically matured a significant amount while in hiding. These were some of the stages that she went through during this time that I felt were important to highlight.

Motif in Diary of a Young Girl

I think the a large motif in Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl is maturity. It astounding to see the growth and maturity that Anne attains over the course of the novel from age 13 to 15, though going through an experience such as hers will cause anyone to grow up quickly. At the beginning of the novel, many adults in Anne’s life consider her spoiled and petulant, and try to lecture her into maturity by giving her “sermons.”

In the beginning, Anne’s concerns mostly encircle that of the common middle class European girl: which boys admire her, whether she will pass her exams, and  In the beginning of her diary, Anne’s view of maturity is very different from what it is at the end of the novel. Most of her ideas about maturity have to do with womanhood. Anne has frequent admirers at school, but only “loves” one mostly uninterested boy, Peter. In the Annex, she is frustrated at her lack of identification with her mother and sister, and is often chided for not being more proper or lady like, such as when she lies down in the bed next to Mr. Van Daan, “at her age!” though Anne never thinks of the situation in such a way. She states “oh, how I long to get my period - then I’ll really be grown up,” so Anne initially sees much of her maturity as being tied to puberty and femininity. After a passage describing in detail what she can “hardly wait” for when she gets her period, Anne adds a year and a half later “I am surprised by my childish innocence. Deep down I know I could never be that innocent again, however much I’d like to be.” This addition offers tremendous insight into Anne’s beliefs about maturity, as she looks back on her early writings.

Throughout the course of the war, hearing so much discouraging news, and losing friends to concentration camps, Anne loses her innocence. She achieves maturity, not as much through her rise to womanhood, but through the deepening of her understanding of humanity and the brokenness of the world. As Anne matures, she increasingly searches and clings to hope, offering that to her readers, she talks of all of the beauty left in the world, in nature and in connection to God. She gives the advice to “think of all the beauty left around you and be happy.” Moreover, “in spite of everything” Anne firmly holds to her belief that people are still good at heart.

Despite these changes in Anne’s outlook on her maturity, throughout the novel, the reader may note a longing for authenticity, true connection, and meaningful relationships as a lasting desire for Anne throughout the diary. From the beginning she laments that she does not have friendships with classmates that demonstrate mutual understanding, in the Annex she expresses sentiments of alienation from her mother and sister, and by the end, she hopes for her writing to reach a wide audience and affect others for good.

Sexual Identity in The Diary of a Young Girl

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl
Category A Prompt 4

Anne Frank enters seclusion at pivotal time in her development: puberty. Her understanding of her sexuality, even when isolated from the world, helps establish her identity as a young girl growing up. Moreover, her willingness to write about a normally “hush-hush” topic also adds to her identity. She has no limits, which I think is very healthy, but unusual for the time period. I chose a passage from January 5, 1944, in which Anne speaks of the changes in her body. She notes that she has a “terrible desire to feel [her] breasts.” Anne goes on to describing how she had the urge to explore her best friend’s body and compare breasts. These thoughts are common to young people going through puberty. As Anne’s willingness to explores these areas is also a testament to her character. She is a naturally inquisitive girl whose questions have not be silenced by moral rigidity of her society. A big factor in Anne’s personality is her ability to think for herself. She doesn’t take the words of adults as absolute truth because she knows that her parents and other adults are trying to shelter her. Instead, she takes time to form her own conclusions. Her fascination with the human figure-especially the female body- is not uncommon. Anne, a young girl, wishes to know what her body might develop further into. That she finds beauty in the human figure impresses me. People tend to shy away from it or label that as perverse or perverted. This same diary covers another topic: sexual fluidity. Anne writes that “when [she] slept with a girl friend [she] had a strong desire to kiss her, and that [she] did do so.” Young children have a tendency when they are younger to explore the body’s of their close peers. Again, Anne’s actions speak to her desire to know more, to explore the feelings inside her. In this instance, she refrains from judging herself, which most would do. She allows these thoughts to pervade her mind without admonishing herself. She allows herself to experience what she is feel. She is emotionally open with herself as opposed to repressing “unwanted thoughts”. This openness speaks greatly to her sense of self. Contrastingly, Anne also wishes she had a girlfriend though we see throughout the novel her crush on Peter van Daan. She never thinks twice about how these two desires may be conflicting or contrary. I think in a some way she understands that it is acceptable to be a contradiction. Overall, Anne Frank had a stronger sense of self and her identity as a young girl than most in her time period and our own.

The Diary of Anne Frank and Religious Identity

"Be brave! Let us remain aware of our task and not grumble, a solution will come, God has never deserted out people. Right through the ages there have been Jews, through all the ages they have had to suffer, but it has made them strong too; the weak fall, but the strong will remain and never go under!"

It is obvious that religious identity plays a key role in this text and therefore, I chose this passage as a reflection of identity in the text because it show the uniting power of identifying through religious conviction. When Frank writes this passage, she is connecting through time and space to the members of her religion. She draws on their strength and perseverance and she, in return, imbues the text with hope and optimism, even in the depths of struggle. In this passage, she solidifies her own identity as a Jew and can remain hopeful as a result. This text is especially powerful because it follows a passage where Frank laments as to why the Jews have been singled out and persecuted, and even though her religious identity is why she is being marginalized and mistreated, she still takes pride in who she is.

"Let us remain aware of our task" is an interesting part of this passage that I would like to draw attention to. Not only does it use the nominative plural "we" to indicate she is referring to her self as well as Jews everywhere, but she mentions that they have a unifying task, a responsibility that they all share. Not only are they drawn together by their identities as Jews, but in their mission to preserve their beliefs beyond this period of strife. Again, Frank takes an optimistic tone by looking favorably towards and making plans for the future, despite the dire circumstances that she has been in for so long and what the audience knows about Frank's eventual fate.

All in all, this passage encompasses many facets of Frank's perspective towards her religious identity. She draws on her core religious convictions, which remain unshaken by her circumstances, as she claims that God has never deserted her people and would soon provide a solution to their suffering. She reinforces the unifying characteristic of her religious identity by using "we" and "us" and recognizing her need to find strength in the stories of her ancestors and other Jews' need to hear her hope for the future and positivity. But all this positivity is tinged with the wisdom of knowing that she and her loved ones are suffering purely because of their religious identity. This passage shows that identity within a group can have consequences but that their is power in depending on and learning from others that you identify with.

Motif in The Diary of a Young Girl

One of the motifs that we see in the novel is that of maturity. Anne’s transition from being a young, innocent thirteen-year-old girl with childish problems to a much more mature fifteen-year-old by the abrupt end of her diary is a central point of the novel. The beginnings of the novel have her writing about such menial and inconsequential things such as descriptions of her classmates and her friends. But one experience that focuses on the motif of maturity, where Anne had to deal with what she called an experience that made her whole class “quake in their boots,” was when they were waiting to see how many of her classmates would move on to the next grade level. She talks about how she is only worried about her maths grade because she has already been scolded by the teacher for excessive chatting in class. This experience encompasses the overall idea that at this point, Anne is writing about the problems that face a thirteen-year-old middle-class girl and not really considering the impending danger that faces her family and her Jewish community. There is really no tone of worry about the impending dangers that face the Jews in Germany, and as a child she is adapting to the situation and is not currently concerned with such matters. The “quaking in their boots” description of the class that Anne gives about the grade promotion is something that a reader would have thought had to do with the Gestapo or the beginnings of the persecution of the Jewish people. But we find out that all she is talking about is something that happened in the Jewish Lyceum and would be considered mundane by the time her entries reach the end of her life. At this point in her life, she is concerned with grades and boys, exactly what any typical young girl would be. She is deeply invested in her life at school and her social world is blended along into this worldview as well. She matures substantially by the end of the novel, but at this point, she sticks to writing about the normal childhood problems that face a young girl.

Jewish Identity in The Diary of a Young Girl

Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl



Shae Call

Category A-Critical

Option D

Look at the issue of identity—class, gender, race, nationality, religion, etc—in the text. Conduct a close reading of one passage and analyze its representation of/ engagement with one of these key aspects of identity.

“Who has made us Jews different from all other people? Who has allowed us to suffer so terribly up until now? It is God who has made us as we are, but it will be God, too, who will raise us up again. Who knows? It might even be our religion from which the world and all peoples learn good, and for that reason and only that reason do we suffer. We can never become just Netherlanders or just English or representatives of any country for that matter. We will always remain Jews, but we want to, too.” – April 11, 1944

The Jews have been referred to as the chosen people of God.  Judaism teaches God has a special plan for his people.  Anne knew that even though times were bad, they would get better because it was written that God would bring his people (Israelites/Jews) out of suffering and into the promised land. This particular passage showed the faith Anne had in God’s plan for her future, “It might even be our religion from which the world and all peoples learn good, and for that reason and only that reason do we suffer.”  Judaism affirms the inherent goodness of the world and its people as a creation of God.  This, I believe, is why Anne tried to see the best in the situation.  

Her identity as a young Jewish girl remained strong in the Jewish belief that God will one day gather up, resurrect and rebuild their people (as stated in Leviticus).  When she began her diary she questioned the Jewish motives of her mother, “Why is she making me act so religious and devout?”  Her faith in a God who is merciful and just began to increase as she got older and was reflected in her later writing.  Jewish belief is also founded on the idea that belief comes out of actions.  Proclaiming her faithfulness by standing by the convictions of her religion and not denying her faith during a time of tribulation is how she chose to actively portray her religious identity. She left a touching legacy that lived on through her diary. Its message of perseverance in the face of persecution remains timeless.

National Identity in The Diary of a Young Girl

Nicole LaReau

Anne Frank: Prompt 1d

            Nationality during the Holocaust seems a black and white issue; after all, the Germans and Jews were sworn enemies. However, Anne Frank is stuck somewhere in the middle of these two nationalities. Her and her family were forced to leave Germany because of their religion, but their departure does not eliminate their former national identity. Anne spends the pages of October 9, 1942 in her diary discussing the horrid rumors beginning to circulate about how the Germans are treating the Jews in Holland, as they have begun to take away many of their close friends. But this treatment is nothing compared to outside of Germany: “[i]f it’s that bad in Holland, what must it be like in those faraway and uncivilized places where the Germans are sending them?” She begins to identify with the nationality of her host country versus her birth country early on in her time in hiding.

            However, Anne seems to still be wrestling with her identity. In the same passage as above, Anne still identifies those who are suffering as the “other”. She is Jewish but she has not been taken, therefore those who are in far-off lands being tortured by the Germans remain distant in her descriptions; she refers to the Jews in concentration camps as “the people,” as in “[t]he people get almost nothing to eat, much less to drink…many people look Jewish…” By distinguishing herself as separate, she unknowingly seperates herself from the nationality that is the reason for her current living situation. In these descriptions exist a confusing dichotomy of recognition for the plight of the Jewish people without ownership for her own religion and shifting nationality. The consequences of her Jewish identity seems far away in the cozy confines of The Secret Annex.

            As the book continues, Anne begins to answer the discrepancies amongst her nationality and religion. Although she doesn’t fully embrace ownership of one nationality in this particular passage, she concludes by saying “[f]ine specimens of humanity, those Germans, and to think I’m actually one of them! No, that’s not true, Hitler took away our nationality long ago.” Through this statement, she begins to reconcile herself to the shifted identity of a collective people as well as her own changing identity in the face of war.

The Epistolary Nature of Anne Frank's Diary

The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank was without question one of the most gripping historical/personal narrative accounts I’ve ever read. From beginning to end my heart was simultaneously pounding and aching for Anne Frank. Although not originally intended to be read by the public, The Diary of a Young Girl still reads very smoothly. This is due in part of course to Anne Frank self-identified as a writer to begin with; even when she was just writing for herself it is clear that time and thought went into her prose and the way she described her daily life in hiding. However, her diary also translates well into manuscript form because of the epistolary nature of Anne’s writing. An epistolary novel refers to a unique structure utilized by writers, where the narrative is formatted as either a series of letters or, as in Anne’s case, a series of journal entries.  

When Anne was writing her diary she wrote each passage as a letter or message addressed to the diary itself that the she personified as a character called Kitty.  The epistolary format impacts the overall text by creating a channel through which the reader can truly connect with Anne and her family. Anne openly acknowledges that Kitty is fictional and because of this the reader can step into the role of Kitty themselves. At a certain point when I was reading the book, it no longer felt like Anne was writing in her diary, it felt as though she was writing to me, as though I had become Kitty. Anne engaged with Kitty, but since Kitty did not exist and could not engage in return, that role becomes subconsciously filled by the reader. It allowed for a closer, more emotional, and more connected reading of almost any book I’ve ever read.  

A prime example of this close reading occurred midway through the book, an entry from Friday, 29 October, 1943. A row was happening within the household between Mr. and Mrs. Van Daan, that all members of the Frank familiar were privy too. In Anne’s words “the yells and screams, stamping and abuse-you can’t possibly imagine it! It was frightening. My family stood at the bottom of the stairs, holding their breath, ready if necessary to drag them apart! All this shouting and weeping and nervous tension are so unsettling and such a strain…” In that moment, I felt so in sync with the characters; empathizing with the fear that led to the built up frustration of constant confinement and the ultimate eruption of emotions. The constant state of mounting tension kept my heart pounding and my nerves on edge throughout the entire book. By allowing the reader to become Kitty, the reader is able to connect with Anne in a way that I’ve personally never experienced before in a book. It was an especially humbling experience to be able to read Anne Frank’s diary and connect with her and the history she represents, even if only in my own small way.

Erin Brandenburg