The Diary of a Young Girl, also known as The Diary of Anne Frank, or Anne Frank’s diary is a collection of diary entries starting in June of 1942 while she is still living in “Peace”. It quickly transitions to her and her family along with a few others going into hiding from the German Nazi’s during the peak of WWII and Hitler’s reign. The diary entries go over many months and years and stop just before her “Secret Annex” hiding place was found out and she and her family along with the others were shipped off to Auschwitz. Anne goes through a lot of personal growth throughout her time and she writes about it addressing it back home to her fictional friend Kitty. Anne goes through a lot during her life and sees and experiences many things that a girl so young should never have to deal with. Nonetheless, Anne experiences a lot of personal growth throughout what we can read from her diary entries. From the little, innocent girl to someone hiding for fear for their lives from Nazis that want to take her away from her family to her inevitable death just because she is Jewish.
At the beginning of the diary, her entries were what is to be expected from a young girl in school, talking about her friends, parents pets, school, and her sister. She knew about how people were being called up to be taken away and how her family could be next in line any day. But, even though she was still a little girl with her diary and had a lot of growing to do in fact, not only physically but mentally and psychologically as well. She received her diary on June 12th, 1942 and one of her first entries was “I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.” A big theme in this book is confidence, she mentions it a lot throughout her entries whether it is confiding in her parents or the lack thereof or her sister, or soon to be very good friend Peter. When she wrote this she is showing that she does not have anyone to comfortably confide in and that she feels lonely or not fully understood by people around her. She is a child and uses the diary to express her thoughts, ideas, and dreams to her friend “Kitty” without fear of what anyone else might think. This lets us see into her mind and shows us how he changes throughout her years and how she personally changes.
On November 8th, 1943 after living in hiding in the “Secret Annex” for over a year things have changed and she wrote in her diary: “I see the eight of us in the Annex as if we were a patch of blue sky surrounded by menacing black clouds. . . . [They loom] before us like an impenetrable wall, trying to crush us, but not yet able to. I can only cry out and implore, “Oh ring, ring, open wide and let us out!” This excerpt from her diary is important because it shows how she has become much more pessimistic over her time in hiding. But, this makes sense since she has been isolated to a few rooms of a house, on limited rations and strict rules for over a year. She has changed and become more pessimistic, she feels isolated and alone even more than ever and this is where her diary and dear friend “Kitty” come to help her through it. Though “kitty” cannot help her through everything, she is scared that her family and she can be found at any moment and taken away and she fears for what her future may hold or if she may even have a future at all. We see this a lot throughout her diary entries but towards the end, there is a spark of hope that changes her mood and outlook on life altogether.
By the end of Anne’s entries, she has changed her outlook on life. She hopes that they will all be out soon and has also found something or someone else to occupy her mind. Peter, she is obsessed with him and its helping to cloud her mind of all the horrible things happening in the outside world. “Whenever I go upstairs, it’s always so I can see “him.” Now that I have something to look forward to, my life here has improved greatly. ” – February 18, 1944. She has found a new love for Peter and spends all her free time thinking of him, dreaming of him or talking to him upstairs in the attic. This shows a real change in her personality and mentality. She has shown real personal growth from the little, innocent girl she was through her dark, gloomy times of pessimism and no hope to having hope once again and “A reason to live” or “Be happy”. She changed drastically and it is very apparent through reading her diary because you get to see into her mind and her thoughts, dreams, and desires.
Throughout Anne Frank’s diary, we get to see a glimpse into her world. From moving to the “Secret Annex” and living there for years we get to see a change in her mentality and how she perceives different things. She was once gloomy and had no hope that they would ever be safe to leave but once she found her love for Peter it all changed and she was able to find meaning in her life and new found hope for an end.
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