The Diary of Anne Frank: A Play

Anne, based on the real-life Anne Frank (1929-1945), is the protagonist of the play, and she tells the narrative from her first-person point of view. She is a young Jewish girl, who is 13 years old at the start of the play when she goes into hiding with her family and 15 by the end when she and the others are found and arrested by the Nazis. There is little action, and most of the characters have little agency over their lives, but Anne is the character who goes on a clear journey of transformation throughout the play. At the start, she is a child, transitioning from a world in which she was popular and well-liked into tight domestic quarters where her enthusiasm and forwardness are not always welcomed. To the older characters—particularly the van Daans—Anne’s childishness is at best an annoyance and at worst a liability. Anne wants to become a writer, and she develops her voice and her maturing sense of self through her diary. She expresses frustration with her own feelings and immaturities, and she finds a personal sense of escape in the privacy of her diary and within the secrets of her own body as she embraces the changes of maturation.