Anne Frank: are people good at heart?
[NOTE: This is a repeat of a previous post. I think it’s always timely, and certainly is timely now. I came across a reference to Anne’s famous statement recently in an essay on the Hamas attack of October 7, and once again the person who wrote the essay simplified and misunderstood what I see as Anne’s message.]
I’m currently reading Francine Prose’s Anne Frank: the book, the life, the afterlife. It’s about the process by which Anne Frank wrote and then rewrote her diary, with an eye to its ultimate publication, and how her father edited her two versions into a third, the one the world ended up knowing. Then Broadway and Hollywood got into the act, as well as writers such as Philip Roth, until the diary and its message had morphed quite a bit from the original (or, more properly, originals).
Most of us have read Anne Frank’s diary – or at least parts of it, in some form or other – and even those of us who did not, are probably familiar with at least a few of its quotes, the most famous of which is probably Anne’s observation: “in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.”
It’s instructive to look at the quote once again, embedded in its original context. When we do, we find it to be far more complex and dark than it appears when as a single famous sentence standing alone, just as Anne Frank’s achievements as a writer and thinker are far more complex than the simplifications popular culture have worked on her diary. Remember as you read the following that she was only fifteen years old when she wrote it [emphasis mine]:
Anyone who claims that the older ones have a more difficult time here certainly doesn’t realize to what extent our problems weigh down on us, problems for which we are probably much too young, but which thrust themselves upon us continually, until, after a long time, we think we’ve found a solution, but the solution doesn’t seem able to resist the facts which reduce it to nothing again. That’s the difficulty in these times: ideals, dreams, and cherished hopes rise within us, only to meet the horrible truth and be shattered.
It’s really a wonder that I haven’t dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death. I see the world gradually turning into a wilderness, I hear the ever-approaching thunder, which will destroy us too. I can feel the sufferings of millions, and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.
Anne Frank seems to take the long view. Hers is a consciously willed optimism that takes into account some of the greatest horrors the world has ever known, and includes her own untimely death, which she correctly foresees. Whether the peace and tranquility she ultimately envisions are temporary or permanent, and whether they are of this earth or beyond it, her message has nothing of the innocence or simplicity of a trusting child, although it has often been portrayed that way.
The Anne Frank monologue is well known. IMHO it is one of the finest out there. I love the cadence and subtle smooth sound. I can’t imagine this being done by a male voice. But, boy o boy done by a good actress it is a fine piece of work. It is listed here as a monologue, but as I have never seen “Peter” I always think of it as a soliloquy and it is sometimes referred to as such.
Enjoy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wvxjLEML30
Some people are good at heart. This is more likely to be found in individuals, in personal contacts. A people, as a group, gripped with a supremacist or hate-filled agenda, is less likely to have individuals who are good at heart, and the whole culture can easily become overwhelmingly evil. See the “Palestinian” culture, which is rejected even by otherwise Muslim places like Egypt.
One answer is to be found in Genesis 8:21:
And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done.
Another answer may be found in the Christian doctrines of original sin, and God’s grace.
P.S. There are good Palestinians, too. Some very good ones. They work hard. They are decent. They wish to get along with their neighbors. They, too, are caught up, as were other decent people in the past, in what is essentially the Mufti’s web of terror, fanaticism and hate.
And that is part of the—ongoing—tragedy.
From the “Good at Heart File”…
Compare and contrast:
1.
‘ “Hundreds of dead people in Israel are still unidentifiable because of what Hamas terrorists did to their bodies.” ‘—
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/10/hundreds-of-dead-people-in-israel-are-still-unidentifiable-because-of-what-hamas-terrorists-did-to-their-bodies/
2.
“Hundreds of San Francisco High School Students Leave Class to Protest Israel”—
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/10/hundreds-of-san-francisco-high-school-students-leave-class-to-protest-israel/
Hmmm. Rather “interesting” “dynamic” working its way around the globe…
And so, should one wonder at this point whether the Liberal Jewish community has been “mugged” sufficiently?
(To tell you the truth, not sure I would want to bet on it…. Probably need a bit more hammering…you know—because…people are basically “good at heart”, which I suppose STILL TRUMPS, for certain people, self-preservation…. To be sure, self-preservation, especially for certain people/groups is simply unconscionable….)
Which leads one to wonder…whether World Jewry is living a Purim Redux moment? (A Ninth of Av moment?)
Well whatever….”Ya gotta believe”….
(AND the worst thing you want is “Biden”‘s “back”…. nonetheless the Lord is said to work in mysterious ways
File under: Esther 3:8-15
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/esther-full-text
+ Bonus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WiwAGYtTl8
And a timely reminder (perhaps) from Jonathan Turley on “Where We Stand”…
‘ The “Exhilaration” Of Massacre: Russell Rickford & The Radical Chic Of Higher Education’ —-
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/exhilaration-massacre-russell-rickford-radical-chic-higher-education
(Apologies if this has been linked to previously…)
Thanks IO… you went straight to the heart of the matter. Literally.
There’s a difference between optimism and hope. I traffic in nearly none of the former but (forgive my schoolboy Hebrew) me’olam v’od `olam of the latter.
No, people are the same in every age. Few rise above the crowd. They have been called the Remnant.
To quote the Tanakh, Yeshayahu (Isaiah) Chapter 64:5, “And we all have become like one unclean, and like a discarded garment are all our righteous deeds, and we all have withered like a leaf, and our iniquities carry us away like the wind.”
How does “good at heart” mesh with “like a discarded garment are all our righteous deeds”? Seems to me that “good” is on very relative, very humanistic, very shaky ground, when compared to HaShem. Are we fooling ourselves?
Re: Francine Prose
I read her book, “Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them,” and I was quite impressed. There is much artistry in good writing and it’s worth learning how that works, especially if one wishes to be a writer. Recommended.
Years later during the Occupy Wall Street mania (2011) I was disappointed to discover Prose was one of the many writers and intellectuals entirely seduced by the phenomenon.
______________________________
I was struck by how well-organized everything was [at Occupy], and, despite the charge of “vagueness” one keeps reading in the mainstream media, by the clarity—clarity of purpose, clarity of intention, clarity of method, clarity of understanding of the most basic social and economic realities.
I kept thinking about how, since this movement started, I’ve been waking up in the morning without the dread (or at least without the total dread) with which I’ve woken every morning for so long, the vertiginous sense that we’re all falling off a cliff and no one (or almost no one) is saying anything about it.
–Francine Prose
https://observer.com/2011/10/occupy-writers-now-publishing-writers-too/
______________________________
I’m not sure conservatives grasp how deeply Occupy hypnotized the Left. For many it was like a pure Leftist Utopia magically emerging into history. Hosanna!
Then Occupy fizzled. For practical reasons even Blue Cities started bulldozing the Occupy encampments. Old-school Marxism had failed.
So the Left went back to drawing board. Switching the priority from economic/class divisions to DEI/anti-racism/intersectional divisions turbocharged the movement and allowed the elites to get religion, join in and, I would say, coopt the whole business.
Success! We’ve even got the Occupy-style encampments back … in spades!
Francine Prose is a serious leftist. I wonder how that might color her book on Anne Frank.
People may be “good at heart” (but sometimes they sure take their sweet time about it)…
Related:
…NOW he tells us:.
“Billionaire Democrat Changes Mind About Trump;
“Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya says ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ blocks people from seeing that many of Trump’s policies were solid.”—
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/amid-middle-east-chaos-billionaire-democrat-admits-trump-enacted-incredible-foreign-policies-5512116
Well, TDS certainly blocked him.
But kudos for opening up his eyes and for his honesty (and, no doubt, courage)…
Viktor E. Frankl, a concentration camp survivor pondered man’s inhumanity to man; “From all this we may learn that there are two races of men in this world, but only these two — the “race” of the decent man and the “race” of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people.”
In the ‘decent race’, most people are as good as this calculation: how naughty can I be and still get into heaven? Our conscience dictates how much and in what ways we are ‘naughty’.
Re: Naughty
Geoffrey Britain:
Santa Claus taught me everything I needed to know…. 😉
@Geoffrey
What’s the answer to that “How naughty can I be…” question?
PS. Bill K is asking for a friend… 🙂
I appreciate your friendship, Huxley… 🙂
Sure thing, Bill.
Uh … wait. That’s not what I meant.
This is important.
For thinking, feeling, and reflection.
This evening over at Instapundit — one answer to Barry at 3:47 to the question have “Liberal (or even libertarian) Jews had enough” abuse to switch horses, Politically? — is implied by the scorching denunciations of university equivocations by Law Prof David Bernstein.
PLEASE – take look.
https://instapundit.com/
HE IS MAGNIFICENT.
I’m teaching the book at the moment. It’s a miraculous document IMO.
The part Neo quotes from the diary is the best known but this is the end of its last sentence: “…I get cross, then sad, and finally end up turning my heart inside out, the bad part on the outside and the good part on the inside, and keep trying to find a way to become what I’d like to be and what I could be if … if only there were no other people in the world.”
Somewhat less optimistic I think.
I hate Francine Prose’s politics but I love her Anne Frank book. It seems to be well-researched and gives a fascinating view of how the diary, the play and the Anne Frank “industry” came to be. Prose wrote it pre-Occupy, Huxley, so maybe she wasn’t yet crazy.
Cynthia Ozick wrote an interesting article, “Who Owns Anne Frank?” in 1997. Ozick finds the fetishization of Anne Frank to be disgusting.
I do think it very much depends on the individual, but, if you’re not a PML, then yes, you likely do have a decent heart. I also think most people just want to be let alone to live their lives. There are a few bad apples — often Drama Queens — who like to eph up other people, but most don’t seek to screw up others.
We, as a species, could not have gotten where we are if we were not basically that. It’s too easy for evil to win if good is not abundant.
“…Ozick…”
And the Anne Frank House (or Museum) in Amsterdam is a real eye-opener…as a whole slough of victimized groups get their due recognition except, well…
Those Instapundit links TJ was referreing to above:
https://instapundit.com/612404/
https://instapundit.com/612400/
The counter-proposition might be, “Are some people bad at heart?”
The study of sociopaths and psychopaths would argue yes.
It does not follow that ALL people are bad at heart.
This essay, from a link in the comments to Howland’s post at Unherd, via Neo’s post on fighting WWII today (“this relevant piece”), opines that, historically, most expressions of brutality and hate (which are surely facets of a bad heart) are culturally driven learned behaviors.
https://dvwilliamson.substack.com/p/power-brutality-and-universal-values
Rodgers and Hammerstein nailed that one in “South Pacific.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPf6ITsjsgk
However, there seem to be an encouraging number of people who are willing to go against what they are so carefully taught.
One clearly true proposition coming out of WWII is that SOME people are good at heart, as evidenced by the fact that Anne’s family was assisted in their hide-out by an unrelated family of Gentiles.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Anne-Frank
Others who were similarly good at heart, in harrowing and dangerous circumstances, are memorialized in Israel.
https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/about-the-righteous.html
“Most rescuers were ordinary people. Some acted out of political, ideological or religious convictions; others were not idealists, but merely human beings who cared about the people around them. In many cases they never planned to become rescuers and were totally unprepared for the moment in which they had to make such a far-reaching decision. They were ordinary human beings, and it is precisely their humanity that touches us and should serve as a model.”
There are eternal consequences for acting on the desires of our heart, whether good or bad.
Jeremiah 17:10 English Standard Version
“I the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.”
But for those with good desires, who might be in circumstances where acting on them is not possible, the Lord understands.
2 Corinthians 8:12 English Standard Version
For if the readiness is there, it is acceptable according to what a person has, not according to what he does not have.
I’ve been going through the Fr. Mike Schmitz’s Catechism in a Year. One of the points frequently returned to is the issue of the consequence of the first sin, disobedience to God. The result according to Catholic teaching is we are broken and deprived but not depraved. The rest is left to choices we make as individuals. I think that comports with what we often see in that there are many people that rise above the worst of circumstances: heredity, environmental, experiential etc and then others who given “the best” of these turn out to be reprehensible people. We can all think of examples of this truth, personal, societal and historical.