“The Diary Of A Young Girl” Book Review Example

Original Copyright Date

“The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank is a book written in the course of the Second World War which covers the period between June 1942 and August 1944. The book was written by a Jewish teenage girl, Anne Frank, who just turned 13 at the time she started writing the book, which technically was not intended initially to be a book but a diary. Along with her family during the Hitler’s reign she became a target of his anti-Jewish propaganda. The girl experienced all the burdens not only of war but of hatred, fear of being given into and gassed, so she and her family had to flee Germany and move to Amsterdam, Netherlands, to start a new life there. However, Hitler came to Netherlands soon and all the nightmares reiterated. Anne and her family along with one more family of three people went into hiding. They found a place where they were hiding for over two years prior to being betrayed and exposed to the Nazis.
This short historic overview deems to me totally necessary before starting writing about the book itself because it is namely history that inspired and shaped the book and influenced its every page.
First and foremost, I am convinced that analyzing the book, one should remember that it was not intended to be a book at all, but rather a diary. This is very important as it explains how the eventual book turned out to be not just the description of life of hiding Jews during the war but more like a confession, like a story told to one and only close friend, revealing the deepest corners of Anne’s soul.
There were a few major points Anne made in her diary which can be summarized. First of all, in the first short part of the diary, written at the time when Anne and her family were still not hiding but living a turbulent but usual everyday life, we can see quite a thorough description of Nazis politics towards Jews. Anne describes what precisely the Jews are not allowed, what are the ever-increasing restrictions on them, the ever-worsening attitude towards them in the society. It is very interesting to observe how this historiographical, almost the matter-of-fact account shifts to more philosophical attitude towards the problems of Jews in the society as Anne grows up and as she lives in hiding longer and longer.
Second point is Anne’s observations are relations between people hiding in the “Secret Annex” (this is how the Frank family’s hiding place was called among them). A great deal of what Anne wrote in her diary touched upon what had changed in the mutual relations between of her parents, her sister and herself. Not only Anne tried to analyze how living in the closed space for two years highlighted the corner stones and major problems in people’s characters, but she also wrote about her personal attitude towards her relatives and about how they shifted. This can be seen best on the example of her attitude towards her mother. It was namely during their stay in the “Secret Annex” that Anne realized (and reflected it in the diary) that she suffered from the fact that mother displayed little love and care to her or, at least, much less that she had expected. Living in the closed space helped Anne herself to understand either how much she loved some members of her family, primarily her father, or how much frustrated she was at her relations with her mother.
Finally, the third major point Anne touched upon and which took, probably, the biggest part of the diary were developments in her nature and character. Much of this has been reflected in the diary unconsciously for herself, by which I mean that not only she described what changes in her life and in her worldview she felt, but also her changing character added up much to how she wrote what she wanted to express and to leave on paper.
I think there were several purposes why Anne wanted to write her diary. First of all, in her teens (and she mentioned this in the diary) she was quite lonely, she did not have any real friends, to a great extent because of the attitude towards Jews brought up in the society by Hitler. However, in the absence of any friends, she felt that she wanted to share so many things that overwhelmed her, thoughts that where developing inside her and feelings she experienced during her mental and physical maturing. Therefore, she decided to share these with her new friend – her diary. Secondly, it was mentioned in the very book that Anne dreamt of becoming a journalist or a writer and that having once heard on the radio that people were called upon to write down what they experienced during the war in order to create a vivid chronicle of the war time, she even intended to edit her diary as a book sometime in the future.
What touches upon the main characters of the book, these are mainly either the people who hided in the “Secret Annex” or people who supported them and helped them in their hardships from the outside. First of all, these were members of Anne’s family: her father Otto, her mother Mrs. Frank, her sister Margot and Anne herself. After that, there was another Jewish family hiding with them – Mr. and Mrs. Van Daan together with their son, Peter. At last, there was an Albert Dussell, who joined the others in the “Secret Annex” later. Miep Van Santen, Henk Van Santen, Elli Vossen, Mr. Koophius and Mr. Kraler are all old friends of Mr. Frank who helped the Franks family all along in their hiding by protecting them and supplying them with everything they needed.
So, overall, what Anne tries to get through to the reader is the description of the daily life of fugitives and hardships they experienced as well as much of philosophical contemplating both on why all that was happening to her and her family was actually happening and on some more global subjects connected with development of Anne as a person, as an adult and as a woman.
One thing I liked most in the book is how much of a confession, how much of a revelation of a human’s soul it is. It must be because Anne did not intend, at least at first, to edit or even to show her diary to anybody. This is the reason why her diary is the most pure possible reflection of what she genuinely felt and thought. Along with this frankness one can feel what a great optimist is reflected in every single line, in every single day. It becomes obvious that Anne was a person who (maybe primarily in virtue of her being a child) refused to accept that everything can come to an end abruptly, that she and her family, being Jews, are in great danger. Though it feels like with the flow of time Anne became more sober and a bigger realist, this did not take away the feeling of optimism and desire to search for inner calm and balance. What touches upon what I did not like, I know it may sound too idealistic, but the book impressed me so much that I really cannot think of a single thing I disliked. The book is so specific, so unlike any other that there is literally nothing I would be eager to change.
Anne’s writing style was much influenced by two things. First of all, as I have already mentioned, this was the fact that at first she kept her diary entirely for herself. This made her style maximum explicit and honest. This fact not only made her speak on the very personal things, but also speak on them very frankly, without trying to intentionally adjust the text to any rules of literary writing whatsoever. This made her story very vivid, genuine and very easy to imagine. Another fact about her style is that notwithstanding the fast developments in her character due to her life circumstances she was still a child, and the way she perceived the world and reflected it in her diary contributed much to the style. Unlike any adult writer she did not seek to create any literary text or to write something not what she wanted to tell (and how she wanted to tell it) but what someone else wanted to read.
Of course, I cannot say that Anne was unbiased in her writing, but that is not because there are some distortions in what she wrote, but just because she was a party to the situation in which she lived, wrote and which she described in her book. She just described what she saw and felt, and the form of her work – a diary – only speaks in favor of a very personal approach, not even intended to highlight the situation objectively.
Notwithstanding the fact that the diary is cut short abruptly because of Anne’s and her family’s being taken away by the Nazis I cannot say that the work is incomplete. It may not have a logical ending, but I doubt that a diary may have one, in virtue of the genre itself. More importantly, the diary is complete in the sense of the picture it provides – the picture of how politics is perceived by the disadvantaged, the picture of the daily life of fugitives and a picture of how a person’s soul strives to have a better future no matter what.