Anne Frank’s Diary, Research Paper Example

The Diary of a Young Girl is a published copy of a famous journal written by a Jewish girl named Anne Frank, who was killed by the German army in World War II. It was written between June 1942 and August 1944 while Anne Frank was in hiding with her family in an attempt to evade detection by the Nazi army. Since Anne was required to remain hidden in attics and other small spaces over a long period of time, she used her journal writing as a way to comfort herself and leave a written record of her trials. Although Anne Frank and her family were eventually found by the Nazi’s and she did not survive, her journal acts as a record of her personality and the troubles she faced during the war.

Frank’s written record of her life has several chapters that begin with the feelings that she recorded during the first several weeks of Nazi occupation in 1942 to her death when her family was discovered in hiding in 1944. During this time, she fills several notebooks with notes to track her journey and feelings. She addresses each journal entry as “Dear Kitty”, a nickname she has provided for herself. It is possible to analyze this work in terms of the journal books that were filled because each represent a distinct episode of the war that Anne Frank needed to cope with.

The first notebook that Anne Frank fills contains her thoughts between June14, 1942 to July 9, 1942. In this section, she records some of the restrictions that Jews were required to face including that “Jews must hand in their bicycles, which will be given to soldiers and policemen”, “Jews must not travel by train and are forbidden to drive”, and “Jews must shop only in Jewish shops and only from 3:00 P.M. to 5:00 P.M.”. Anne Frank uses these examples to express how times are changing. Furthermore, she shows that she tries to remain positive in spite of the challenges that she’s needed to face. In this section of the book, she remains optimistic even though she must leave her school and has experienced the death of her grandmother.

The second section of the book occurs between Thursday, July 9, 1942 and Thursday, November9, 1942. During this section of the story, Anne is forced to pack up her belongings and go into hiding with her family. As she needs to transition from hiding place to hiding place, she comes to recognize that the goal of the Nazi’s is to kill all Jews. While she was optimistic previously, she begins to fear her life for one of the first times. During this section, the severity of the situation finally sinks in and she begins to worry. There are days that Anne Frank does not write entries in her journal due to sickness or fear that her writing will make too much noise. This second section allows us to view the major change that Anne Frank and others like her experiences during this stage of World War II; during this time, everyone became aware of the true terror of the Nazi’s.

The third part of Anne Frank’s diary is written between November 9, 1942 and August3, 1943. These chapters represent some of the final moments of Anne Frank’s life. Later entries are optimistic because she has heard that England is successfully resisting the Germans. However, just when she has regained all hope, the Nazi’s found her and her family. We do not know what happened to them, but we do have record of Anne Frank’s story that acts as a primary source to help us understand the troubles that German Jews faced during the Nazi domination during World War II. Even though Anne Frank never intended to write to an audience, she invokes a sense of pathos that makes us admire her and pity her at the same time. As such, it could be said that Anne Frank’s diary is one of the most meaningful sources of all time.

References

Frank, Anne. Anne Frank : the diary of a young girl. B N Mooyaart-Doubleday, 1952.