The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank chronicles the life of a Jewish girl trying to escape Nazi persecution during the Second World War. Anne Frank began writing her diary when she was 13 years old in Holland in 1942, and she relates her experience of going into hiding with her family in order to avoid Nazi persecution. Anne has an intimate relationship with her diary which she addresses as Kitty.
She is able to confide in her diary more than she is able to confide in any other individual. Anne’s writings vividly describe her sense of claustrophobia and suffocation while hiding in the secret annexe with her family and the van Daans.
Anne forms a friendship with Peter van Daan in an attempt to alleviate her loneliness. She yearns to venture out and experience life, but is severely restricted by the Nazi impositions on the Jews. Her yearnings are poignantly expressed in the lines: “Look, Peter, the sky. What a lovely, lovely day! Aren't the clouds beautiful? You know what I do when it seems as if I couldn't stand being cooped up for one more minute? I think myself out. I think myself on a walk in the park where I used to go with Pim.
Where the jonquils and the crocus and the violets grow down the slopes…” The sky is a metaphor for the freedom and liberation which Anne longs for but cannot have.
The Diary of a Young Girl is eloquently written, and it is a must read because it records the life experience of a teenage girl who is persecuted under the tyrannical and despotic rule of Hitler and the Nazis.