After visiting the Anne Frank House and reading her book many times, I think perhaps what’s most remarkable about Anne Frank isn’t only her extraordinary talent as a writer, but really, her ability to be remarkably perceptive in what it means to be an ordinary human. This gave her an unparalleled ability to report on the truth in a way that moves others.
Anne Frank’s diary wasn’t just chosen as required reading in schools because of the history it embodies. The Diary of Anne Frank is renowned because of her ability to connect with the reader effortlessly. She makes palpable the innermost thoughts and conflicts that all people experience. However, we might never dare to admit or utter those types of thoughts out loud.
Anne Frank’s Writing is Currently Relatable.
Everyone enjoys seeing their experiences validated in writing. Anne Frank was masterful at capturing the unbelievable. But, she was exceptional at discussing the typical, even amidst horrendous circumstances. Anne Frank is the embodiment of mindfulness whose calm and resolve so many of us can only hope to emulate even in a small way as the COVID pandemic and political unrest wages on.
Moreover, it is especially gratifying as a young person to read Anne Frank. She writes about conflicting emotions regarding love, reputation, and life in a way that is candid, genuine, and not at all smug or pretentious. If there’s one thing young people appreciate, it’s authenticity and someone who can relate to them. Anne Frank was so keen in her talents in making everyday yet universal teenage musings evocative and entertaining.
The inner machinations of the mind and the human experience are places that few people dare to visit and examine. However, Anne does so with alacrity. Having really no other choice, she spent each day pondering such matters deeply and recorded her findings in her diary, where she reports back to us faithfully. With each new entry, as readers, we cannot wait to take in her contemplation on what it means to be human. Of course, there is also the juxtaposition to her coming-of-age narrative in which we also see what it means to be inhumane. Anne Frank captures the weight and trauma of that experience remarkably as well.
My Experience at the Anne Frank House.
In visiting the Anne Frank Annex and Museum, I had no notion that I would be taken with her not just as the innocent victim of the Holocaust, but as a brilliant writer, to be sure. Anne Frank’s ability to bring a setting to life through words is remarkable. There has never been a greater writer since who can make so palpable the details and conditions of a place and the mounting tensions and emotions of such an environment.
I was floored at the museum, not just because it is such a historically significant place. It also made me realize just how utterly gifted Anne Frank was in her writing ability. I read the book as a student and later taught it several times. I couldn’t believe how every corner of the home was exactly how I envisioned it. What’s more, even the feeling of being in the home was entirely as she described it.
For those who have read her diary, it is not the artifacts that are the source of awe. Rather, it’s more the sense of deja vu from the exactitude of the details within her journal entries. As I stepped behind the giant bookcase and head up the narrow steps into the tiny annex, Anne Frank’s story becomes even more inspiring.
I walked through her bedroom and stared at the typically teenage posters of celebrity crushes on her walls. It was supernatural to me that as a teenager, Anne Frank had the resolve and discipline to write through the pain, hope, anguish, and fear that she felt as the world around her capitulated to pure evil. Even as an adult, I cannot imagine having that kind of soundness and resolution.
It’s Hauntingly Prophetic.
One of Anne Frank’s diary quotes inside of the home proclaims:
“You’ve known for a long time that my greatest wish is to be a journalist, and later on, a famous writer. In any case, after the war, I’d like to publish a book called, ‘The Secret Annex.”
— Anne Frank, May 11, 1944
It is a haunting quotation which would go on in an odd way to become prophetic. My heart breaks at times when I consider the exceptional work that Anne Frank would have gone on to pursue. She seemed in all respects one of those people who were just destined for something more. However, I’m grateful that her truth and words still remain and that her brilliant legacy as a writer and human outlives the ghastly horrors and evil perpetrators of the Holocaust which was the source of her premature demise.
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