The Diary of Anne Frank is well known around the world today. In the play, The Diary of Anne Frank, the use of dramatic conventions such as asides, monologues, and apostrophes were used to contribute to the overall serious yet hopeful tone of the production. To begin with, there is multiple times where the families used asides to help the audience understand the lack of things and such an unfortunate life they lived. For example, each person talked about what they missed most from their every day normal life. During this occasion, the tone was serious yet hopeful, specifically to make the characters think they would go back to their normal life at some point. This kind of skill really helps emphasize the importance of the meaning that this production is trying to convey. Another important convention used was monologues. Towards the end of the play, Otto Frank, the only survivor of the families, came out on stage and explained to the audience what happened to Anne and the Frank’s, as well as the Van Daan’s, and Mr. Dussel after the Nazi’s came and took them away. There were also many times where Anne …show more content…
would be reading things that she wrote in her diary to kind of explain how she felt to the audience. During these times, it gave those characters a platform or spotlight to provide their thought and feeling on the situation they were in. Finally, a very effective dramatic convention called apostrophe was used.
If you don’t know, an apostrophe is a skill that is used to refer to something that is dead or not present. In this play, Anne uses a perfect example of apostrophe when she is talking about her missing best friend Helene. Remember, even though Anne’s writing makes her seem older – the passage reminds us that she is just a pre-teen girl whose world used to revolve around her friends and their activities. That is juxtaposed against the harsh reality of where they are now. This also depicts an image in the audience’s head that this was a very serious time in the world and that these families were in a terrible crisis. These families had to drastically change their lifestyle in a negative way to provide them with safety during the
Holocaust. In conclusion, the play, The Diary of Anne Frank, used three very effective dramatic conventions. Those three conventions are asides, monologues, and apostrophe. These dramatic conventions really assisted and powered the serious yet hopeful tone that the production was trying to show.