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Anne Frank Project Writeup

We used these symbols: flames, diary, picture of Anne, Jew star of David, blood, Nazi flag, picture of concentration camp, picture of people dying, Boom! The song, and glass shattering. Flames is hope, the diary and the piture of Anne shows the soul of a young girl going through, the Jew Star represents the discrimination against Jews and the Nazi flag describes Hitler. The sounds were shocking, thrilling. On the other hand, there was one that is soothing, soft and melodic. We gathered, analyzed and processed information from a variety of sources, being critical thinkers.

The flames that burn the diary symbolize hope and happiness. When the blood drips onto Anne’s diary, it’s supposed to be like someone dying and their blood is dripping on her diary. When the glass breaks, the sound, is supposed to show that there is violence, and glass is getting broken. The Nazi flag shows that the Nazis were a big part of this, along with everything they did. Just as the Jew’s Star of David was supposed to symbolize the Jews and their role in it. Anne’s diary symbolizes her love for writing, and basically how all this information was found out. All the pictures of the gas chambers showed how the Nazis showed no mercy for Jews and how they just stuffed them all in rooms, making them think that they were going to get a shower, but instead they were getting gassed. At the concentration camps, they shoved a whole bunch of people in one little room.

As I don’t have much taste in music, so Catrina and Ahbi searched through millions and millions of websites to dig out heaps of good songs. At last, they found some really great songs such as boom! by System of a Down & 100 Years by Five for Fighting. Boom! is a fast beat song and its lyrics are suitable to the condition going on through the second world war. While 100 years is a slow peaceful song about being fifteen and wishing about the future. Music is important but there’s more than that to make one perfect, the symbols. We’ve used the fire, blood, the Nazi flag, the Jew star and the Anne’s diary as our symbols. Fire symbolizes hope, blood shows death and helplessness, The Nazi flag represents Adolf Hitler. The Jew star represents the discrimination of Jews. It starts off when glass shattered and blood flows; this indicates the disability of the Jews and how helpless they are. In the end, death is the only option and that’s exactly what they get. The beat is fast and the song is clear which makes understanding an easier job. The beats give one nervousness and frightening thoughts. I’ve look through lots of websites to access information showing that I’m a Academic Achiever.

100 years is a soft and peaceful song played when it’s showing all that has she thought of in the ‘Secret Annexe’. All about her life was expressed through simple but meaningful quotes. The song Boom! is all about being fifteen and thinking about the future which what’s Anne is going through the whole time. This is the chance for the audience to be in Anne’s shoes. This song has the lyrics describing on how war went on; when millions were spent on bombs leaving many starving (4000 hungry children leave us per hour, from starvation, while billions are spent on bombs, creating death showers.). The strongest part of the song is the last part when they sang-Whyyy…must weee…kill ooour own kiiind…? (Why must we kill our own kind?) This goes to show that we’ve been critical thinkers by understanding and use the songs and related it to Anne Frank. I feel very certain that the lyrics of this song is suitable for what’s going on during WWll. Whenever the audience listen to what was sung, they would understand the whole situation and be experiencing the pain and sense the suffering through life in the concentration camps; what it feels like to be treated as animals or maybe be worse. This way, we demonstrated the skills of being Involved Citizen by being aware of Anne’s situation. All this makes the crowd both excited and feels uneasy. It starts off when glass shattered and blood flows; this indicates the disability of the Jews and how helpless they are. In the end, death is the only option and that’s exactly what they get. When the Nazi flag and the Jew star merges, his shows how they are similar and connected to each other. At he end, the diary burns and all the pain she had suffered is now gone and hope is near. By using technology to project all this is a tool of communication, which also falls under being Effective Communicators.

The video starts off with a picture of Anne, this is the first step into the movie creating an impression for the audience. Abhi, as usual, being his creative self, created the entire movie using various sources provided by Catrina and me. Abhi did an amazing job with the movie. In my opinion, the sound effects were truly fascinating as it was accurate to the scenes. Besides that, the images were clear and the fonts were big enough, everything is really smooth.

By doing this project, we demonstrated the ability to work both independently and collaboratively because we worked as a group to finish the project made of independent parts of our work put together. Abhi made the flash movie, while we helped edit parts of it and Catrina and Eugene wrote this write up.

After discussing with Catrina (Abhi is away), we decided to give ourselves the grade we deserve. For knowledge, we did a good job on describing the symbols and what they mean. We did a good job on identifying the sounds. We discussed the symbols, images and sounds carefully and did an outstanding job on their meanings; which falls under comprehension. On application, we did an outstanding job on describing the symbols and how it will affect the audience. For analysis, we tried to work hard on comparing but it wasn’t really clear, so I think we only did a good job on it. Last but definitely not least, synthesis, which is based on the movie; Abhi did an amazing job on it and it turn out to an interesting project.

Prompt: “I wonder whether you can tell me why it is important that people always try so hard to hide their real feelings? How is it that I always behave quite differently from what I should on other people’s company? Why do we trust on another so little? I know there must be a reason, but still I sometimes think it’s horrible that you find you can never really confide in people, even in those who are nearest to you.” (p.139)

So I am going to write a “letter” to Anne answering her questions and I’m also going to write about how I feel about this and what people should do to prevent or change this, but I am going to combine both of these so it becomes a letter with how I feel.

Dear Anne,

Based on what I know, I think people try really hard to hide their real feelings so that they will “fit in with the crowd”. When people hide their feelings, I think that they don’t want other people to know how they actually feel, which makes me think that it doesn’t matter enough to them, because if it mattered enough, they wouldn’t just cover it up and fake smile at people or act like nothing is wrong. Also, I think that everyone does this, so it’s normal for you as a young adult to do this. Since everyone does this, that’s what is considered “normal” in some peoples’ points of view, but others feel that you should let out your feelings and not keep it contained inside yourself, because eventually you’ll burst. It’s not that you wouldn’t burst when you let it out earlier, but it’s that the longer you contain it inside yourself the bigger the explosion when you bursts would be. I believe that it’s a chain reaction, one person hides their feelings, then another person sees them do this and follows their lead, then another person adds on to the chain, and it goes on forever.

Behaving differently from what you should is also very normal, I think it’s because if you act like you normally do with some other people, it would feel weird to you and probably that other person. It’s also just an uncontrollable thing, well that’s what I feel at least, because that isn’t how you actually feel, but you can’t change how you talk to them when you actually do it. This also has to do with how much you trust them, because if actually trusted them a lot, then you would be able to behave the way you think you should or would. But trust takes a long time to develop, sometimes even years, it depends on the person, so don’t worry about this too much, lots of people think about this exact question all the time. The people closest to you are very close, but that little gap of weirdness when you say a certain thing is what makes you behave differently. So I think if you just become very close with the people around you, then everyone would have a person to talk to for every problem, unless all the people you’re close with don’t talk about that certain problem.

I hope I helped a bit!

Catrina

Prompt

If you compared my diary with Anne Frank’s it would be almost identical, well at least up to the part where she changes dramatically. Except for a little tweaks here and there, you wouldn’t even be able to tell which one was whose. When she said, “Mummy is frightfully irritable and that always seems to herald unpleasantness for me. Is it just chance that daddy and mummy never rebuke margot and that they always drop on me for everything?” That is exactly how I feel these days. “Now Margot is just the prettiest, sweetest, most beautiful girl in the world.” Margot is exactly like my brother in the parents’ point of view. They think he is just the kindest, trustworthy, smartest, and caring person. To me, I do sort of look up to him just because he is older, but otherwise he’s just like a normal brother just like to anyone else. It seems that the younger one always gets blamed for everything that happens, even if it wasn’t even their fault. I totally feel this way since I’m the younger one and it always happens to me!

“I love them; but only because they are mummy and Margot. With daddy it’s different. If he holds Margot up as an example, approves of what she does, praises and caresses her, then something gnaws at me inside, because I adore daddy. He is the one I look up to. … He doesn’t notice that he treats Margot differently from me.” I feel that way too. My mom is usually the one telling me to do this and that, being all uptight to the point where it’s annoying, reminding me to do the same things over and over even though I already told her I would do it later, and now I basically hate her, which might be a bit strong to say, but I don’t say anything to her now except for “ugh” and “i’ll do it later”. I don’t actually have anything to say to her, whereas my brother can talk to my mom and my dad for an hour and still be into the conversation. I’m not saying I’m jealous, because I don’t actually want to sit down and just talk to my parents for that long, I would bore myself to death. My dad, however, is more fun to talk to, and even when he tells me to do stuff he says it in a way that makes me want to do it. A lot of times, my mom treats my brother much differently than the way she treats me, but when I tell her how I feel, she just says, “no that’s not true, I treat both of you the same way, and I love you the same amount.” The only thing I can say after that is sure whatever. I know it’s not true because when she tells me to go do something, she says it like a command, as if she’s talking to a stranger, but if she’s telling my brother to do something, it’s like can you do this for me please? It annoys the hell out of me because she doesn’t realize what she’s doing here. Her temper with me is getting shorter and shorter. My brother and I could say the same thing in the same tone but different reactions would come out of my mom. Apparently life isn’t as fair to some people as others.

While looking back at old diary entries, I noticed that in 2002 I felt the exact same way, so it wasn’t just now; it’s been like that for most of my life I guess I could say. I’ve actually told my mom about how I feel, and all she can say is that it’s not true. So I don’t think it’ll ever change between me and her, whereas my brother will be really close to her. I don’t really plan on trying to talk to her about this again, because I know the only thing that will come out of it is an argument. I don’t think there’s been a single day in my entire life that my mom has not made me feel rejected, annoyed, mad, or sad. I guess I could say I’m sort of used to it now, because its always like this and I think it will be forever. So basically I can’t turn to anyone for help if I really need it except for my friends, who sometimes can’t even help. I’m just going to have to hope a miracle will change this big jumbled up mess.

Prompt: If my parents told me that I had to pack a couple of things in a small bag because we were going into hiding what would I pack? Material things or memorable things? Here is what I would bring and why:

First of all I would bring all my old journals and diaries that I have previously written in. this will keep me entertained for a long time reading about my past troubles and thoughts. It will also be interesting because it will show how I wrote when I was younger compared to now. Possibly I could improve just like Anne Frank did in her journal while she was bored in hiding. I would also bring pens, paper, and a diary or journal to continue writing or just doodle on.

Second, I would bring pictures of my friends that I wouldn’t be able to see anymore unless we were able to escape or live through the war. I would probably bring my yearbook too because they’re very memorable too. It showed by the signing on the back page who I was friends with and wasn’t friends with. These will definitely bring back good memories and probably even cheer me up when I’m sad. I thought about this one for a while, because I thought well if I brought my camera it would be very useful and fun to use. I could take pictures of random things when I’m bored and look at them digitally. But I decided not to do that because if there were no electrical outlets to charge, you would never see those photos again, unless you were so bored you were able to invent a charger for the battery without electricity.

Third, I would bring my 2 stuffed animals. They mean a lot to me partly because of who gave it to me, but mainly because of all the good times its had with me and my friends. Not that I think they’re alive and it was happy, but as in how much joy its brought into my life. I would bring them also because they are just so cute and soft. They would probably also be a pretty good pillow

Lastly, I would bring letters from my friends that I’ve collected over the years. They mean a lot to me and show how much they actually cared for me. My friends have molded me and made me the way I am now. They complete my puzzle.

To me, courage means to be able to face your fears and overcome obstacles. Courage is just like bravery, but different in ways that are hard to describe and understand. I think courage is different for everyone, just like courage for one person can be just to talk to someone who they are scared of, while to another person it could be to discover the wonders of the deep seas. Being able to do something that you wouldn’t think of doing or being able to do is courage. To be courageous, I think people have to know that they might risk something for doing that. For example, if one person suddenly thought of an idea to fly a waterproof kite in the thunderstorm just to see how it would fly, it would be a courageous thing to do because he could risk his life doing that by getting struck by lightning, but he realizes it’s something no one has ever done before and he wants to show people what really happens. So he is basically risking his life just to interest the lives of other people. I also think it’s a brave thing to do, but bravery isn’t really risking anything, it’s just trying something new that you wouldn’t usually think of doing.