A commentary essay based on "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl" which the work is analyzed in comparison to Elie Wiesel's "Night".

Essay by cherrychik0101High School, 11th gradeA, October 2005

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In the novel "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl", the author uses several literary devices to contribute to both the major and minor themes of the memoir. Such literary devices are similar to "Night", another memoir by Elie Wiesel. Both novels are set in the years of World War Two in middle-eastern countries during the Holocaust. The authors of the two novels, Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel, were close in age but their experiences with the Holocaust differ greatly. Anne's and Elie's use of descriptive language and other such devices heighten the effect that their publications have on its readers.

Anne is a young girl living in Amsterdam who is forced to hide with her family and another family from the Nazi regime. Anne is considered lucky since she escaped the concentration camps while several of her friends were deported. Hanneli was one of Anne's friends who frequently appears in Anne's dreams.

In these dreams, she is clothed in rags and appears to be worn down, physically and emotionally. Hanneli had previously been arrested and deported to a Nazi concentration camp. She serves as a reminder of the fate of Anne's friends, companions and several million other Jews who suffered from the camps. In the novel, Hanneli serves as a symbol of the guilt that Anne has since she managed to escape concentration camps for nearly two years. This symbol is significant to the theme of suffering which the novel portrays.

Suffering is a major theme in both "Night" and "Anne Frank's Diary", but they are expressed using different symbols. Anne's guiltiness is symbolic to suffering while Elie's use of the word "night" is symbolic, also. When Elie first hears news of deportation, he says, "Night fell." By saying this, he is not simply...