The Complex Dance of Career, Mortality and Survival in Anne Frank's Diary

The following passage is from The Diary of Anne Frank, first published in 1947.   Through these first-person words Anne offers a reflective lens into her career desires that transcend life and death in a seemingly incompatible dance of acceptance and denial.  Oddly, although the university students I work with are not in such perilous situations as Anne, their life experiences just as heavily impact their career choices.  Like Anne, their careers aspirations are influenced by self-awareness, contradictory feelings, the need to make a difference, and the desire to have a purpose.  The theme of accepted mortality versus a fight for survival help to illuminate these notions.

April 4, 1944

I finally realized that I must do my schoolwork to keep from being ignorant, to get on in life, to become a journalist, because that’s what I want! I know I can write ..., but it remains to be seen whether I really have talent ...

And if I don’t have the talent to write books or newspaper articles, I can always write for myself. But I want to achieve more than that. I can’t imagine living like Mother, Mrs. Van Daan and all the women who go about their work and are then forgotten. I need to have something besides a husband and children to devote myself to! ... I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that’s why I’m so grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that’s inside me! When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived! But, and that’s a big question, will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer?

Through her words Anne is expressing an emerging self-awareness of her identity in the past and present, while expressing a desire to change this identity in the future using her “God given gift” of writing.  And through this desire to reinterpret herself Anne demonstrates a fight for survival.  She expresses a desire “…to keep from being ignorant, to get on in life…” Her fear of being “ignorant” or “unknown"[1] especially considering the perilous world of uncertainty she is living with (being Jewish in Nazis occupied Holland in the War while living in a secret annex), impacts the temporal dimension of time.  She is able to imagine her future taking shape by fighting for survival - while admitting to her mortality.  In her remaining time she wants to leave a lasting impression “to go on living even after my death!”   

The immense uncertainty that Anne is living with also impacts space, which affects the way she feels.  These feelings are often in contradiction of one another such as “sorrow” and “excitement”, “life” and “death”.  Yet the space helps to make sense of the contradictory nature of these words, helping the reader to discover how it is possible to fight for survival while at the same time accepting death may be imminent.  Anne notes that “when I write I can shake off all my cares.  My sorrow disappear, my spirits are revived...but will I ever be able to write something great?”  These words help to reveal the complex notion that it is possible to both deny and accept death. 

Through the lived relation Anne has with other women in the secret annex her social sense of purpose is greatly impacted.  As she states “I can’t imagine living like mother, Mrs. Van Daan and all the women who go about their work and are then forgotten.”  Anne wants a meaningful life, a sense of purpose, to be more useful.  Her relation to her potential self versus her aspired self is another demonstration of her fight for survival, for remembrance.  In these words Anne is also revealing much about her bodily presence.  She wants to be seen as more than a wife and mother, she wants to be seen as a talent, perhaps as a “journalist or a writer.”  In this modality she will BE, even after death.

This passage from Anne’s diary helps demonstrates an intricate unity, between time, space, relation and body in which Anne is able to weave the seeming dichotic elements of mortality and survival into one fabric. Exploring this theme through a career lens, she is conceding she is mortal and death may soon come, yet in her passion to live, to have a remembered voice, her writing will ensure her survival.  Through reflecting on this the seemingly incompatible dance, the dance changes, it becomes one of grace and poise that leaves me with a sense of wonder.  And this dance oddly enriches my understanding of student’s career aspirations today and how life heavily impacts this.

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[1] Source: http://www.etymonline.com, accessed October 29, 2010.

Review of Phenomenological Paper, TOUCHSTONE: FINDING A LUMP IN THE BREAST

Touchstone: Finding a Lump in the Breast

By Susan Underwood

The Question:

The title of this article attracted me because I had a lump in my breast and was curious about how another woman experienced this phenomenon.  But like this deceptively complex article title, identifying the question was difficult.  It wasn’t until I peeled back the layers of questions and discussion that I concluded the question was simple, the article just had complex ways of attending to it.  The question, “what is it like to find a lump in the breast?”  is addressed through exploring seven  thought provoking topics, however it is not possible to discuss all these questions in a 750 word blog so I have decided to review (1) mortality, (2) Underwood’s sense of dwelling in her body, and (3) her changing perspective on the essence of living. 

Underwood addresses the question on finding a lump in the breast using a complex technique that alternates between her personal descriptions, quoting a poem on bereavement and breast cancer (see link below) and using journal excerpts from cancer patients. In my first few readings of the article I couldn’t recognize the difference between the author’s voice and the quotes, but careful re-readings cleared up my confusion and demonstrated that this technique enriched the article by expanding on the author’s experiences, insight and description – addressing the question on a deeply intimate level. 

How the Article Addresses the Question:

Underwood uses the following quote to launch an inquiry on her changing views of mortality after discovering the lump “Once I accepted the existence of dying, as a life process, who can ever have power over me again?” (Lorde, as quoted in Underwood).  The author goes on to describe the implication of how discovering a lump in her breast, in time, forced her to admit to her mortality.  Through this admittance Underwood was changed forever, recognizing that death would come and that without fear of death there was an enhanced power in living. 

This flows into Underwood’s relational questions on dwelling and the body as separate from being , describing the process of the body changing from an “entity of oneself” to a sense of being “ousted from our dwelling places” when the lump was discovered.  She questions who has the right to be in her - her ‘being’ or her ‘lump’?  Her body couldn’t hold both.  Underwood expands her discussion on this through questioning what is the touchstone, “a black gritty stone once used as a testing base for metals.  They would strike the metal against it and know its content purity by the mark it left.” (Webb, as quoted by Underwood). This leads to an interesting line of questions.  Does the touchstone refer to how the discovered lump (the strike) in the breast exposes her essence, her being, her purity?  Does the piece of metal being stricken (her body) refer to mortality? I don’t think these questions are supposed to have one correct answer. Rather they invite a dynamic multitude of considerations that deepen the contemplation of what it means for Underwood (and perhaps for others) to find a lump in the breast.

Underwood goes on to analyze how finding a lump in the breast caused her to consider the quality of her life, changing her perspective on life-world connection.  This seems to lead to a cathartic realization of the temporal nature of her body and life, learning to treat both with care. Underwood skillfully concludes her article, pulling together all the threads of addressing her main question while including the voices from the journals and poem.  She writes “finding a lump in the breast, searching for an understanding of this experience, deepens the connections to the life-world and at the same time frees us to live in this world in a new way.  For once the immanence of our beings is embodied in our thoughts and actions, we no longer move in silence and fear, but with greater grace and eloquence step slowly toward our end.”

These words resonated with me because of the questions they evoked.  Am I living life with grace and eloquence?  Have I lost perspective on my life-world connection? Do I recognize my mortality?  How did my views on these topics change with my discovered lump? These are deep thoughtful questions, that I didn’t anticipate asking after reading a short article.  Yet asking the questions shows the power of a well written, thought provoking, phenomenological paper where the author uniquely engages in her experience of discovering a lump in the left breast.  

*I am including a link to the poem used in this article, by Adrianne Lorde, A Woman dead in her forties.  Reading the poem helped me understand the context for the quotes, (and the music is very good).  http://poemsandtheirmusic.blogspot.com/2009/07/woman-dead-in-her-forties-by-adrienne.html

Testing

Just testing what it will look like and some of the features.   I am looking forward to learning how to blog.