Before We Were Free

The book Before We Were Free is a first person novel about a young girl, Anita, growing up in a world of chaos in a dictatorship Dominican Republic. I find that this book is very similar to Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank because both have scenarios of hiding. However, the girls are in different situations and in completely dissimilar countries as well.

            In the two books, there are many closely related circumstances. One very obvious one to me was that both girls, Anne and Anita, go in to hiding for a long period of time. In both cases, some people living in the house know the families are there, some don’t. In these houses the girls are learning to become young adults (as am I) during the hiding process. Another major similarity is that the families don’t start off hiding in the beginning of the books but after matters in the country turn worse and more violent, being concealed was a necessity. This is because two groups, the Secret Police for Anita and the Nazis for Anne, were trying to find and imprison them as well as their families. These two young girls were forced to go up against two awful groups of people with little reason for their mass destruction.

            Also in the books, a few differences were easily noticeable. One example is that Anita is only hiding with her mother (because her siblings are hiding elsewhere and unfortunately, her father was kidnapped by the Secret Police), while Anne is hiding with her whole immediate family and some friends. The results of the hiding take two different paths, and I noted that one group came out with a much better result. One day, Anita and her mom were picked up in a helicopter and whisked to New York (and they thankfully survive). Anne’s family is tragically caught and sent to concentration camps, in which only her father survives. Most importantly, Anne’s story is a real diary, while Anita’s is fiction. While reading, this provided me with two unique points of views.

            In conclusion, Before We Were Free and Diary of a Young Girl are two similar books with like ideas, but are still different. I felt that while reading Anita’s story I kept thinking what was happening to Anne at that point in time.