The Diary of Anne Frank: A Play

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1955

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Summary

Background

Act Summaries & Analyses

Act I

Act II

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

The Star of David

Once both families have arrived safely at the Annex, Peter immediately sets to work ripping off the yellow Star of David badge that all Jews are required to wear sewn onto all their shirts, dresses, and jackets to identify them as Jewish. While watching Peter remove the badge, Anne’s immediate reaction is to be concerned that Peter will be in trouble if he’s caught on the street. She hasn’t quite internalized the idea that none of them will be out on the street for a very long time. The irony of the badges is that their use by Nazis to recognize Jews only demonstrates that Jewishness isn’t visible. The Third Reich racialized Jewishness as a threat to their goals of creating a racially “pure” Germany with an Aryan population. Their antisemitic propaganda called Jews racially inferior, even less than human, claiming that their genes were dangerous. Nazi scientists attempted to find definitive physical markers of Jewishness and were unsuccessful, but they still disseminated propaganda that showed stereotypes associated with the appearance of Jewish people as identifiable characteristics. They enforced the Jewish star badge because neither the Nazis nor the populace could identify Jewish people without them. The Star of David, or the Magen David in Hebrew, has been associated with Judaism for centuries and was adopted as the official symbol of the religion in the late 1800s. Hitler and Nazis attempted to re-contextualize the symbol by using it to humiliate, to force Jews to be conspicuous for the sake of abuse, degradation, and murder. However, Jews continued to use it as a symbol of strength and survival after the Holocaust. Therefore, the Nazis were not nearly as effective in destroying the star’s cultural symbolism as they were with the swastika, which they appropriated from Hinduism and a long history of other world cultures and religions that had used it as a symbol for prosperity and well-being.

On an individual level, however, Peter has built up negative associations with the Star of David badge and by extension with Judaism as a whole. He tells Anne that the day the badges were enforced was “the worst day of [his] life” and refers to ripping it off as no longer being branded. Of course, a brand cannot be simply removed, and neither can their Jewishness. When Anne follows Peter’s lead, she struggles to rip the stitches. Her mother sewed it on firmly, which is a metaphor for the way Judaism and Jewish faith have been deeply instilled by Anne’s upbringing as an integral part of her identity. After she succeeds, Anne points out that the star has left a ghost of a mark on her sweater. Ironically, after they are arrested, all of them will be marked with a real brand, the permanent brand of the numbers tattooed on the arms of concentration camp victims. Peter is sick of being Jewish and wishes he could shed that part of his identity. In another time and place, he could convert to another religion and even distance himself from the culture and ethnicity of Judaism. Because Judaism has no legitimate physical markers, the Nazi system fabricated a system in which Jews were registered and required to make themselves conspicuous. Therefore, in another context, Peter could make choices in his identity. Anne, however, insists that Judaism is a part of them that they can’t change. Persecution has affected Peter differently than Anne, perhaps because Peter is a shy, awkward boy, and the star badge not only invites abuse and unwanted attention but also makes him far more visible and different than he would be without it.

Anne’s Diary

The red plaid diary Anne Frank received as a 13th birthday gift only weeks before she went into hiding is the most enduring symbol of the girl and the legacy of her abbreviated life. Although there is cynicism from Holocaust survivors and scholars about the way the diary has been framed as an inspirational text, a beacon of hope from horrific times, it’s undeniable that Anne was a victim of the Holocaust like any other victim. The diary is what remains of her otherwise silent voice. The diary is one of the first things Anne unpacks, a nod to the audience that this is the genesis of the artifact the diary will become, an artifact that is more widely recognizable than the names of the people she hid with. Unpacking it marks a change for Anne because she tries to leave and find pencils, and it’s the moment she learns that she cannot go out of the annex for any reason. Otto instead gives Anne his nice fountain pen, signifying that his handwriting and signatures no longer have value in the world, but Anne’s diary is important, and she deserves an important implement to write it with. The other characters also seem to have a sense that the diary is important. For instance, Mrs. van Daan questions Anne, wheedling her about what she’s writing and worrying about what she might be saying about her. This moment is almost metatheatrical, as Mrs. van Daan’s character in the play is constructed from the words that Anne is writing.

Although none of them could know it, they were reasonable for worrying. Anne’s diary would be what preserved their voices as well, giving them a place in her own posterity created through her perspective, and Anne knows she wanted her voice to be heard, as shown in the play when she immediately starts to revise her diary for publication when she learns on the radio that the Dutch will be interested in personal diaries and letters after the war. The diary represents Anne’s privacy in the Annex, which is ironic since it would become anything but private after her death, but within the claustrophobic space of their hiding spot, there is very little privacy at all. Anne shares a bedroom with Mr. Dussel, a man who was a stranger before he showed up and became her roommate. In her diary, Anne confides her fear and feelings. With no peers to learn with and mirror, Anne develops her sense of self by mirroring through the diary. Mr. Frank sees her writing as an escape, a way of building her own world. Before hiding, Anne was a social butterfly, always talkative and popular. Living in the Annex shapes the way she grows and matures. Through her diary, she learns to value introspection and those rare things she doesn’t have to share. She treasures her first period and its secrecy because it’s only hers. She explores the beauty of her sexual and romantic feelings as they grow within herself, even as her external experience is irritation at Mrs. van Daan’s incessant teasing about her relationship with Peter.

Anne’s diary shows that she was a normal, if exceptionally intelligent and articulate, teenaged girl, relatable through universal experiences of puberty. Her diary has become the most prominent voice of the Holocaust, a family-friendly introduction to the horrors that largely omits the appalling truth of what they’re hiding from. Like the 1955 version of the play, it lacks the all-important ending of Anne’s story, which puts her short life into perspective. At the end of the 1997 version of the play, the Nazis break into the Annex, and audiences see the beginning of Anne’s and the others’ nightmare. The play shows Anne dropping her diary, unable to take it with her, signifying that her diary is ending prematurely, and the worst part of her story is yet to come. The tragedy of Anne’s story isn’t just that a bright young girl, full of hope and promise, died. It’s that she died an unthinkable death, suffering and stripped of her identity and human dignity, and then she was dumped anonymously into a mass grave. The revival of the play includes details of her death that were likely not yet even known at the time the first play was written in an attempt to remind audiences that as refreshing as naïve young optimism may be, there is nothing bright or refreshing or hopeful about the Holocaust or what happened to Anne. There is no triumph of the human spirit because evil won, even if the Nazis were stopped before completing their genocidal mission. As painful as it may be, Anne Frank’s narrative can’t end with the diary without trivializing her life and those who died with her, even if it makes for a much more pleasant story.

Silence and Noise

Silence is the most important rule of the Annex. It supersedes interpersonal civility and the fulfillment of basic human needs because it is the central tactic for continued survival. Silence is not only auditory for the eight people in hiding but refers to the silencing of all levels of their existence because their mere existence is punishable by death. The Annex is situated in a precarious location. It's not only, as Mr. Dussel notices, at the center of the city, but it’s above and connected to offices and warehouses that are populated with employees during work hours, and it’s impossible to know where their loyalties lie. In a sense, they are almost hiding in plain sight, right under the noses of those who want to arrest them and others who would turn them in for the cash reward. They must be completely silent from eight in the morning until six in the evening while workers are present. This means being as still as possible, only walking carefully in socks, and not using the bathroom or any plumbing all day, minus a short lunch break that isn’t mentioned in the play. They also must burn their trash at night, be fed with fake ration cards, and never set foot outside or even look through the windows, erasing every trace of evidence that they’re alive and in Amsterdam. At six pm, they are free to move around and make noise, but as demonstrated at the end of the first act, they must be vigilant at all times and ready to silence themselves at a moment’s notice. When the burglars break in, the Annex dwellers take off their shoes and wait in silent trepidation. The noises are so pronounced in the silence that they create a picture of what is happening, especially the footsteps on the stairs and the rattling of the bookcase. When Peter accidentally knocks over a chair, breaking the silence in the Annex, it seems like an enormous event, amplified by the painstaking quiet.

Anne is especially affected by the imposition of silence because she is not a silent person. Anne is Miss. Quack, the charming and garrulous young girl who was popular with the other girls (and boys) her age. At the beginning of the play, Anne is the only character who isn’t rattled at all by their harrowing walks to the Annex. She slept soundly through the last night in her own bed and sees hiding as an adventure. The first uneasiness she expresses is her response to the quiet. Anne says that the silence makes her feel trapped, like a bird in a cage. She isn’t accustomed to muting herself. As she confides to the audience, “It’s the silence that frightens me the most. Every time I hear a creak in the house, or a step on the street, I’m sure they’re coming for us” (17). Intense silence becomes almost hallucinatory, and they can’t risk covering it with their own noise or even breaking the silence to reassure one another. The noises and sirens from outside seem like they’re always coming for them, and it becomes unclear whether certain sounds, such as the train, are real or imagined out of fear. Their ears are always searching for the tiniest sound. For example, Mrs. Frank is awakened in the middle of the night by a noise so quiet that she thinks it’s a rat, discovering instead Mr. van Daan’s painstaking attempt to be quiet while he secretly eats. For Anne, silence forces her to bottle up her fears and confusion about the world around them, and they erupt in late-night screams as she is plagued by nightmares while the others desperately try to quiet her. Anne learns to cope with the forced silencing of her voice by pouring it into her diary. For all their careful quiet and alertness, the Nazis at the end enter in silence. Their presence is undetectable until it’s too late, demonstrating that their efforts could never have been enough if their presence was suspected.