I’ve asked myself again and again whether it wouldn’t have been better if we hadn’t gone into hiding, if we were dead now and didn’t have to go through this misery, especially so that the others could be spared the burden. But we all shrink from this thought. We still love life, we haven’t yet forgotten the voice of nature, and we keep hoping, hoping for…everything.

High school literature is presented to the average American student, who by this time in their lives, are interested in sports, girls, and hanging out with their friends, mostly. When handed a book to read, forcibly, it’s often met with the same results that parents witness when force feeding their kids vegetables or that God awful cough syrup that no man or woman alive felt comfortable with. Likewise, it’s greatly needed at that time in one’s adolescent life to promote values and lessons, to shape the lives of the youth, to know what it means to feel these emotions and cry those tears which we find meaning in.

Dietrich Stogner and Josh Mauthe have often said, on their podcast, the two books they would require the human race to read would be Generation Kill by Evan Wright and Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden. Both display American warfare at it’s most haunting and tragic ends, but more importantly from the soldier’s perspective. On the flip side, two that I would recommend from the side of civilians, Night by Elie Wiesel and this sprawling book, The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.

This all started with a song, album, and book that are tied together in the life of Anne Frank. While Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea isn’t solely a tribute to Anne, her spirit lives throughout the record, to the point where it’s clear that Jeff Mangum thinks of her as living and in a great many ways, she does through many of the songs on the record. “Holland 1945” is as stark a track as the ideas it puts forth. It’s wishful thinking in morbidity, as it is sweet, wishing she had died in 1945 in Holland, with her sister nearby, never captured by the SS. The track “Ghost” is a stark tribute to Anne’s soul, as it still lives in Jeff’s mind and in the world.

As the album progressed and I became more obsessed, I was eager to read Anne Frank’s  Diary, and get to know this person that Jeff Mangum did back in the mid 90’s. This book was never required reading at any point in my middle school or high school career, that I can recall, and even if it was, it didn’t stick with me at all.

From it’s inception, this diary was given to her as a birthday gift, and before going into hiding and even after she treats it like a friend, even giving it a name; Kitty. Throughout, though mostly in the beginning, she comes off as officious, self-righteous, but intelligent as well. In adolescence, what person doesn’t think that their shit doesn’t stink, this case is no different and the parallels to the youth this book is often assigned is humorous on a look back.

As the book progresses, her development into young womanhood is a central focus as she develops feelings for another that she goes into hiding with, Peter. This was an aspect of the book that her father, Otto Frank, tried to keep out of the book, but is hard to over look. Quite bluntly, she goes into a page and a half description of a vagina that may be too much for some, but is important to the central character (I hate calling her that, she was a fucking human being!). Anne’s also got a great head on her shoulders, for someone who was 13 at the time she started writing this, she writes better than most people I know, including myself. She often explores topics that are way before her time, like the plight of women in her time, the struggle to maintain individuality in a small confined space where her parents want something else for her, and education. Her pluck for journalism and her strong stance to not become a house wife is so hopeful for the bleak future.

Toward the latter half of the book, and without intention, it slowly creeps up on the reader; despite her pluck, intelligence, and hopeful nature, she’ll never make it out of this alive. I often wondered, while reading this, why I deserve to live while she died, tragically of typhus in 1945. Why did talent and beauty like this have to be infected with the evil of one man, striving to wipe out what he thought to be inferior. The tone of this book never emphasized Judaism as it’s cause, though it is; humanity has no bias and the Diary captures that better than any document I’ve ever read.

I can’t think of life as some small microcosm after I finished reading this, it’s intent is far larger than anyone could ever hope to understand, and that’s part of it’s mystery. The more we know, the less we really understand; knowledge and wisdom are far from the same thing, and what are life lessons to those who never had the chance to learn them? If I could have, I would have wanted to know Anne; A book is no replacement for the person, and despite that, in those “If you could have dinner with one person in history” situations I would pick her. If there is a heaven (I believe there is.) I hope I get to meet her, the strong will that never got to be, but is confined to a war document. I know I can’t describe the importance of this document, but I don’t think I need to to a person who has read it.

It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed in a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I fell the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more. In the meantime, I must hold on to my ideals. Perhaps the day will come when I’ll be able to realize them!