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.
I completely agree, we do see Anne mature throughout her diary entries. The early entries are definitely rather childish in the sense she is worrying about everyday school things. However, these entries provide an interesting perspective because we get to see how Anne truly felt before her life was overtaken by the idea of survival.
ReplyDeleteHi Chris,
ReplyDeleteWhile I certainly agree that Anne's maturity is an important theme in the novel, it is not a motif. This response would work better for the first A prompt about theme. I would then focus just on the quaking in her boots scene and make an argument about what this scene tells us about childish perceptions of trauma or war time. That being said, a motif is a system or series of images or symbols that reinforce a theme. For example, to keep with the focus of this post, Anne's shoes might be a motif that reinforces her maturation. You could look at her "quaking in her boots" here, her worn-down shoes she is too big for, and then the nice new pair of older shoes she gets while she is in the annex. The motif of shoes would then reinforce Anne maturing and coming into her own while in hiding.