After reading the 3rd chunk of Anne Frank, analyze two symbols in detail. Why are they important symbols in the diary and what do they symbolize?

What are some of the symbols in Anne Frank?

Front Cover of Anne Frank's actual diary

       Once again, Alex here. Yet again, our teacher asked us to do something while reading Anne Frank, and expected our posts to be shorter, which will be explained in a second. She asked us to think of two symbols and what they might mean to Anne, and maybe others in the Annex, because, you know, what else are you going to analyze while reading a diary. You know this should just be the basic protocol- give the symbol and what it symbolizes, provide some text, and explain that text. Well, I am sorry to say that this post is not short, but is actually 1056 words long, and you have 933 words left to read after this sentence, including the captions for the pictures. Have fun! Anyways, I've got two symbols, one that just came straight to my head when the teachers were explaining what we would be doing, and another that took a little more time to come up with. So, let us hop into this before I ramble on too much.

       The first symbol we'll talk about is the one that jumped to mind when the teachers were explaining what we'd be doing. It is her actual diary (pictured left, for all of you that haven't noticed). To Anne, it is something that she can tell all of her feelings and vent out into if things aren't going her way. This is seen multiple times throughout the diary, and one of them is shown in the entry for Saturday, 30 January, 1943, and it says, "I'm boiling with rage, yet I mustn't show it," (Frank 64). Without the diary that she so often puts her feelings into, her emotions and feelings would just bottle up until she would eventually explode at the tiniest thing that ticks her off. This makes the diary kind of like a true friend, except it won't yell at you or be disappointed in you for doing something weird or outrageous, and it will still stick with you no matter what. From what Anne says on Tuesday, 11 April, 1944's nine and a half page entry (she must have had a lot of free time that day), you can tell how attached to it she is, as she wrote, "'Then they will find Anne's diary,' added Daddy. 'Burn it then,' suggested the most terrified member of the party. This, and when the police rattled the cupboard door, were my worst moments. 'Not my diary; if my diary goes, I go with it!'" (Frank 203). She would rather be dead then not have her diary, kind of like how some really great friends would rather lay down their lives for their friend instead of having their friend die. In both cases, one cannot live without the other. So, to Anne, the diary symbolizes a true friend that will stick with her no matter what.

       

The attic window that Anne and Peter
often looked out of together.

       The other symbol I chose is the attic window and the outdoors, since the two seem to go hand-in-hand. The outdoors represents freedom, and the window represents what is keeping her from that freedom. Before giving the usual text and explanation, I have one thing to point out: her story seems a whole heck of a lot like that of a prisoner in prison. She so longs to go outside, to be free of all of the hiding and bad times in the Annex, and she can see this through the window, but it is keeping her from that, and it represents the horrors that will come if she is caught or leaves the Secret Annex. The tale seems so much like that of a prisoner in jail that I couldn't help but to point that out. But now, back to your regularly scheduled text support. You can tell that she thinks as the outdoors as freedom and something that can help cure a lot of the bad parts in life from what she wrote in Wednesday, 23 February, 1944's entry, and it says, "The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely, or unhappy is to go outside . . . ." (Frank 158). Let's see (rustling of papers) afraid, yep, lonely, about 20 or so pages that she mentions that, and unhappy . . . ladies and gentlemen, we have a fit! After the break-ins, the families in the Secret  Annex are afraid of being caught. Anne wrote all the time about how she was so lonely before Peter, and now writes about how lonely she is when she is not in his presence. As for unhappy, the constant flow of arguments and lack of sufficient food should tell you something. So Anne longs to go outside, where she would be free from all of those emotions, which seems to explain her association with outdoors and freedom. And that would only happen when the Nazi's are gone, when they would truly be free. As for support for the fact that the window symbolizes her being trapped, you can kind of just guess that from the context clues. They always have curtains up on the windows that hide what is going on inside the Annex from the outside. In the Annex, they forbade her and Peter from looking out the window from time x to time y at night, out of fear of having even a sliver a light being seen through a gap in the curtains. The window is the barrier between the Secret Annex and the real world, and Anne wants to escape from the Annex and be free, but she has to stay in the house, and the window kind of taunts her with the fact that just outside them is freedom, but she can not go out and experience that.
So, there were a few examples of symbols that exist in Anne’s world: her diary being friendship, the outdoors, freedom, and the attic window representing her being trapped. They are kind of easy ones to point out, but with proper explaining, some new, less obvious ideas about them can be formulated. Which leads me to my questions: Do you guys have something else to add about any of the symbols? Or can you guys think of any other ideas about what any of the symbols I mentioned could possibly mean?