The Diary of a Young Girl (1942), Anne Frank

It is my opinion that The Diary of a Young Girl (1942) easier for the reader to relate to than a text book. As a student, when I usually read a book, I find myself looking forward to the end and want to know how the story plays out. However, with this journal it was quite the opposite. As its pages grew thinner, you not only grew closer to Anne but also more anxious for her survival. You can actually feel a human life slipping away in the Nazi hands that seem to be an omnipresent force, clasping at her throughout the pages.

Wiki- Anne Frank

As this is in the form of a journal, her words come to life and the reader feel much more involved and somewhat like you are there, hiding in the annex with her, as her fictitious friend ‘Kitty’. Her use of facts and quotes from political people and daily conversation contrast each other and achieves a realism that no historian could. The dates before each entry shows the reader a precise date for not only the events but also the reactions from the people forced to face them, which is also very moving. I personally liked how at the end and at intervals of my edition they included photographs of the Annex and Holland at this time (1942), photographs of Anne and her family and copies of the hand written original diary. Appendixes such as these that are found in textbook affected me much less than the ones in her journal as you feel emotionally invested. This was strange to me as I remember being in primary school, reading about the impact that the holocaust had all over the world yet it impacted very little in the class.  Reading Anne Frank’s words affected me like meeting a survivor (Such as Eugene Black, 84, who I met in 2002, last at the school in 2012), yet with the sadness of losing her, much like her family would have faced. I believe that if I had read the quotation ‘Little children of eight and eleven years break windows of peoples homes and steal whatever they can lay their hands on’ (p.167) at the age I studied WWII I would have been much more moved than reading the somewhat cold descriptions from text books showing disrespectful gory images.
There are many fictional stories set in this time such as ‘Schindler List’ (1933), directed by Steven Spielberg, which, like history books, make people and events strangely unbelievable and unrealisable.  By contrast, Anne Franks diary is more powerful to a reader as it both a narrative and factual. Whilst reading I highlighted phrases that stuck with me. She was a real child and no one could help her. It made me very proud to have a grandparent who served in the WWII. In the quotation “I want to go on living after my death” (p.171) the impact of her diary hits home as this is exactly what the journal enables.  Rabbi Hugo Gryn (1995) puts it simply and accurately that ‘her word will continue to testify to decency and natural goodness, and that they will reach the heart and minds for countless generations to come…they may indeed endure for eternity’ (foreword, p.xi) and in this way Anne received her wish by living on by us remembering the terrible past and also by stopping it from reoccurring. I believe that the use of personal pronouns, life anecdotes, inner thoughts and opinions about a serious subject matter enhances more emotions in the human psyche than a textbook would, and it is that which pulls the reader away from numbness and into her world. We should never forget and Anne will help us do so.

 Kate Ruston, written 2012

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Lair Like Me...

Within this blanket of white I cannot tell which way is up, which way is down? I ask them but they never answer me. They promised me that they would end it. But they, the wolves, circle me so that I can’t move. So that breathing seems a task, afraid of being heard or not being heard.

            The cold is burning my skin, but I am beyond feeling it. I can only feel the snow, wrapping around me so very tightly. I'm not asking for it, I don't even know if I could manage to ask for any more, my bloodstained hands seem always to be calling back to the promise that I made to him. That one fine morning when his face was still and calm, the way it stayed that way until the snow was pulled up over his face and around my body. The long journey I did not cry out, they did not like that.

            There are voices all around me and the clinical smell of talc is there too. The whispers are like ribbons, bonds that fluttering in the wind, whipping up all the white into the air, like when ghost play in the snow.Where am I looking now, into the wolves’ jaws, up into the sky? My eyes can't focus any longer and my mind can only see paper-thin skin on a thin hand. I should not have lied, like a blanket of snow. Softly, softly, calm down. Hold my hand, it wont hurt. Slid the knife quietly, child. Burning my skin. You promised me you’d end it! Liar like me! I can’t breath. The wolf uses its needle teeth and pierces my arm. The white relaxes me and slips into a liquid, hot in my blood. Melt the snow. Melt my mind if you can find it.

            The wolves seem satisfied and say I should be okay now, nice and quiet for you anyway, John. They are wrong. But they know they are liars too. They pull the snow blanket from over my head and turn to leave after tucking it around my restrains. I breathe in, for it is all I can do, in, out, in, out. Staring and the ceiling, wishing it was sky again. They never let me see what is really there. They never let me remember what it was that I did to you.

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Two Poems...

Faithless Sleeper

Why is it easier to end in anger?

My life, it seems to end with your dagger.

But is that better than living in mortal danger?

I stopped dancing with a branding poker,

I stopped consorting with a jeering joker,

And for what! I seem to have lost a lover,

Who filled my world with joy and wonder,

Who asked me to trust him and more over,

Said he would be there, always, forever.

Yet I stop. I seem to live in slumber,

In this world I’m a helpless dreamer,

And you protect me, the faithless sleeper,

And you’re devoted. But you love her!

In reality, you’re a little shocker!

You string me along but now its over.

I’m not playing your game any longer.

Because of this, I am much stronger.

Google Images

Dummy

Is this fear I feel, my dearest good friend?

Is the trust you seem so happy to break?

Is this awful feeling ever to end?

From this feeling will I ever awake?

Will you give back how I was before?

Will you leave me alone, so I can live?

Will you answer if I choose to implore?

From that first feeling, my hatred I give.

Can I simply forget all of this?

Can I? Of course I, it’s silly to ask!

You and your friendship I will dismiss.

I know who I am; I don’t need a mask.

Two Poems by Kate Ruston, first written in 2011, 2nd in 2009.

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Home Again

Walking down my street on a darkly cold evening. I try hard to remember what I am walking toward. My Home. I've been away so long; I can only just remember the flickering glow in the fireplace, my private summer. I can feel the walls calling me, urging me to come home, much stronger than before. I look upon the door; a naked oak peers though scraps of paint but I still feel so welcomed. A lion head knocker greets me with a roar as I rap upon the wood, awaiting an answer I know I'll never hear.

I remember the furry carpet as I walk with an ebony ribbon round my eyes, searching frantically for the light switch. Dusty floorboards come into sight as light floods the room. I see my stairs. I slid right down them five years previous, or more. I am home now. I feel safe for the first time since I've been gone. A few things have changed as I hear the past resident echoes re-bound off the walls like minions chittering.  To my room I shuffle, though the wrapping paper of the past, Christmases much long ago. The house was warm and amber. My cheeks flood with joy and warmth. Cinnamon still lives here, in these walls, hugging me. Greeting me. This will always be my home… Sat on the windowsill on looking a sight I've seen a thousand times before, feels new. Feels different. Emerald green leaves wave in the wind, their happy I'm home too. That tree is my tree. I planted it and so it is mine.

My mother burst though the door and asks me to come down for dinner. When I arrive it seems she favours the mice's choice over mine. Cracker in hand, I pace around the garden as the neighbours talk in hushed gossip over the boundary. Ironic really. I sit where my swing used to be on the icy grass and imagine sewing up there mouths. Lush green grass explodes in a violent rage around me and floods the garden. I'm tired of gardening. My arms ache. I swig from my lemonade as my sister rocks gently in the corner... playing with her toys, crying down her little face. I play with a gargantuan caterpillar instead. It cry’s sticky green tears all over me and I throw it with disgust.

My cracker breaks on the wall of my home.

The garage smells the same and I see it reflects me too, a sort of old musty smell from lack of care. It’s always been like this, that why I've always been welcome. One summer my friend and I painted it red. Blood red. My friend didn't like it. No one talked to him after that. If fact, they never saw him at all. I planted the honey suckles out side my front door. This was my home. Its still is my home as I still belong. My home forgives everything I have ever done and comforts me to sleep; once again, on the doormat, under the lion head knocker in front of the door, boarded up and impenetrable. And so I sleep. He purrs...

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