Anne also expresses her desire to-go on living after her death, and she thanks God for her ability to write, declaring that it is writing that consoles and encourages her. How ironic it is to read Anne’s heart-searching entries and her assertions about the future when we know, as she could not, that these hopes of hers were indeed fulfilled, but not in the way she expected, and that the very words which she was writing at that moment were to bring her far greater immortality than she could ever have imagined.
Another attempt by burglars to break into the warehouse downstairs forces the members of the group to cower almost motionless for hours, afraid that they have finally been discovered. Anne gives us a graphic description of their whispered conversation and the various sights, sounds, and smells of these long hours. The incident causes Anne to wonder at their fates as Jews; again, she states her belief that the suffering which they are undergoing is so that they may emerge stronger. She also affirms her love for the Dutch nation, its people and its language, asserting that she intends to remain in Holland after the war (April 11, 1944).
Anne is, figuratively, “up in the clouds” when Peter kisses her for the first time (April 16, 1944), although her doubts regarding the propriety of this, and the probable reactions of her parents and sister if they had known about it strike us as rather odd in this age of permissiveness. Although Peter and Anne would put their arms around one another, and, later on, occasionally kiss, their physical relationship was very innocent, a far different situation from the behavior of many teenagers today. In the space of only a few years, and with the help of medical advances in methods of birth control, sexual morality has changed tremendously. Once again, Anne displays astonishing maturity for a girl of fourteen by refusing to accept completely the extremely strict moral standards of her time, writing, “. . . we are shut up here, shut away from the world, in fear and anxiety, especially just lately. Why, then, should we who love each other remain apart? Why should we wait until we’ve reached a suitable age? Why should we bother?” (April 17, 1944).
Anne’s happiness with Peter is not overshadowed by the daily trials of life in the “Secret Annexe.” But perhaps Anne’s awareness of what maturity means has been heightened, for it is a very perceptive, if disenchanted, Anne who writes that the ordinary man in the street is as much to blame for the war as are the politicians, and that there is a destructive urge in everyone, so that unless this changes, bloodshed will always continue. Nevertheless, her irrepressible optimism causes her to write: “I am young and I possess many buried qualities; I am young and strong and am living a great adventure; I am still in the midst of it and can’t grumble the whole day long. I have been given a lot, a happy nature, a great deal of cheerfulness and strength. Every day I feel that I am developing inwardly, that the liberation is drawing nearer and how beautiful nature is, how good the people are about me, how interesting this adventure is! Why, then, should I be in despair?” (May 3, 1944).
Following the advice that Margot has given her, Anne writes a letter to her father, explaining her feelings about him and her mother, the difficulties she has been through during the period they have been in hiding and speaking honestly of her refusal to knuckle under to what she knows has been his silent disapproval of her relationship with Peter (May 5, 1944). Anne’s father has a long and emotional talk with her after this letter, and Anne regrets having wounded his feelings, acknowledging that she might have misjudged him.
Various setbacks—such as the arrest of the man who brought them vegetables, rumors that there is growing anti-Semitism among the Dutch people, and Anne’s fears that, having been born in Germany, she and her family will not be able to remain in Holland once the war is over—cause Anne’s spirits to fall. She wonders if they might not all be better off dead, but still she clings to her hope that something will happen, and that the war will end soon (May 26, 1944). The news of the Allied invasion of Europe revives the optimism of the group, and Anne’s fifteenth birthday is celebrated in a spirit of greater cheerfulness (June 13, 1944).
The last few entries in Anne’s diary are concerned with the various daily events that Anne has written about all along—the moods of the members of the group, their preoccupation with food, the books they read and discuss, Anne’s relations with her parents, and her feelings toward Peter.
Anne’s last entry, on August 1, 1944, three days before the “Secret Annexe” is raided by the police and its occupants are sent to concentration camps, is one in which Anne analyzes herself and her situation, displaying considerable powers of perception. She concludes, after acknowledging that her flippant behavior is just a front to help her cope with the people around her, with the statement that she keeps on “trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and what I could be, if . . . there weren’t any other people living in the world.”
At the end of the period of hiding, Anne is clearly a very different person from the girl who started out to write in the red-checkered diary; especially during the second year, she has matured greatly. Of course, there has been the growing love between her and Peter, and this has certainly left its mark. But in addition to the self-confidence she has acquired, Anne is less quick to judge the other people around her; she has a greater self-awareness now, and she has thought deeply about a great many subjects.
Anne has not wasted her time while she has been in hiding. Under her father’s guidance, she has continued studying various subjects, skills, and languages. She has developed her writing, especially, so that the style in her diary has become more varied and vivid. In fact, her diary contains descriptive passages, conversations, character analyses, and honest introspection that we would not expect from such a young girl; this is one of the reasons why it has managed to capture the interest of so many people over such a long period of time; very simply, it is well-written. Anne’s ability to analyze people and situations has grown as we watch, so to speak, so that we do not feel that we are reading the maudlin confessions of a “mixed-up” teenager; rather, we are eager to find out what this intelligent young woman has to say about the varied subjects which she chooses to write about. Being forced to remain in hiding for two years is obviously too high a price to pay for precocious maturity, but how much poorer our world would have been had we not been granted this glimpse into the inner workings of a young girl’s mind in the years that were so fateful for her and for the whole world.
