Early in the book, I wondered how Anne was able to focus on such trivial matters when she is just lucky to be alive. Upon finishing the book and watching her character and personality evolve, it becomes more clear. It brings the theme of identity and the moral universe into focus. Anne did have a life before she went into hiding, and throughout her diary she describes this part of her life as ideal. Towards the end of her diary, Anne had been in hiding for approximately 2 years. All she had known for 2 years was the annex of the warehouse she had been living in, and she had only interacted with a small group of people. This became her entire existence. The small problems that she faced began to feel like they were very important, because that was her whole life. Anne always had something to say about the small quarrels that she had with the others in the annex or how her schoolwork is going. It is worth mentioning that Anne does mature throughout her time in hiding. She does have existential thoughts and contemplate why the Jews were being persecuted, but the things that might seem little to the reader often felt very important to her. I had to consider Anne’s circumstances in order to understand why she focused on the minutiae of her daily life. Anne’s moral universe is set almost completely in the small annex, which is what makes her so nitpicky and stubborn. This is the same reason that middle school kids are able to get so stressed about assessments or assignments, which don’t really matter in the big picture. These problems might seem silly to someone older, but to the child, that it is their daily life and that is what matters at that point in time.

In The Diary Of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, two themes that emerge are loneliness and coming of age. Although Anne has been placed in an incredibly uncommon situation, she still has the same feelings that many have around her age. Anne feels like she is alone, even though she is in a small, cramped space with 7 other people. She feels that no one understands her, and that she is exiled by everyone around her. There are brief moments when she connects with her sister, her mother, and her father, who she tends to feel most comfortable with. However, for the majority of the story she is frustrated at them because she feels like she is targeted not only by them, but everyone else she is in hiding with. Everyone is constantly taking jabs at her and subtly insulting her. In fact, this is the reason that she is writing the diary in the first place. Early in the text, she writes “Now I’m back to the point that prompted me to keep a diary in the first place: I don’t have a friend.” (p. 6) She writes in the diary as if she is having a conversation with a friend. She even gave the diary a name: Kitty. The reality is that Anne needs an outlet to let out all of her feelings and vent. She craves someone to confide everything in. When she can’t find that, she turns to the diary. As time goes on, Anne writes every little detail of her day in the diary. It becomes her main coping mechanism and it is very therapeutic for her, in a way. The diary almost poses as an actual person as she writes more and more. She starts trusting it more, which becomes clear as she begins to even give it a nickname: Kit.

In no way am I attempting to compare my current situation to Anne Frank’s experience in hiding. Instead, I would like to point out the similarities, as well as the differences. Throughout the story, Anne tends to focus on things that may not seem very important, such as how one of the people she is in hiding with won’t give her cookies. “Except for the first week, I haven’t seen even one of the cookies he so generously promised me.” (p. 78.) While she is worried about this trivial matter, there are millions of other Jews who were not as lucky as her to have a hiding place, be together with their families, have access to indoor plumbing, have a steady food supply, have a bed to sleep in, etc. People were being taken from their homes, separated from their families, and forced into concentration camps. Even these people are not the ones who suffered the most, as millions were exterminated in the gas chambers. This seems to be something that many people these days are guilty of amid this quarantine situation, including myself. I find that humans in general are sometimes unaware of how unimportant their problems are, because there is always someone who is suffering much more. Many people complain about how the government is telling us to stay home, however it’s not like we can’t go outside and take a walk whenever we want to. We pity ourselves, even while there are people who actually have COVID-19 and are in the hospital on a ventilator, facing death. People often fail to realize that there is always someone in a worse situation. The irony of reading the diary of Anne Frank at this point in history is not lost on me. Both the story and the current state of the world have made me realize that I should be more grateful of how fortunate I am, as well as be more aware of not pitying myself because there is always someone whose circumstances are much worse than mine.

In The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, it is baffling how Anne is able to obsess over such small and unimportant things, even while she is in hiding. In the story, which takes place during the Holocaust, Anne and her family are hiding from the Germans in a secret annex of a building. They are in a small space with another family, and Anne feels that she doesn’t fit in with anyone, with the exception of her father occasionally. She is bothered by many trivial things, such as having to eat vegetables. “If I take a small helping of a vegetable I loathe and eat potatoes instead, and the van Daans, especially Mrs. van Daan, can’t get over how spoiled I am,” (p. 42). One would think that given Anne’s situation, she would be grateful that she has any food at all, that she hasn’t been captured by the Germans, or that she is even alive in the first place. This may be attributed to Anne’s youth and naïve nature. However, it is possible that there is a “barrier to knowing.” Concerning herself with small things, like having to eat vegetables, might be Anne’s subconscious way of distracting herself from the reality that she could be found at any moment and arrested or even killed. This coping mechanism may ultimately be what sustains her throughout her traumatic and harrowing ordeal.