Elements of Drama, Making Inferences & The Diary of Anne Frank

Understanding Elements of Drama & Making Inferences

The Diary of Anne Frank

Today’s Agenda: • Review Elements of Drama

• Reviewing Making Inferences • Who was Anne Frank?

Elements of Drama • Drama : a work of literature that is performed by actors for an audience • Dialogue: lines characters speak • Stage directions: describe what is happening on stage

• Conflicts: problems

• Exposition: characters and setting are established • Complications: conflicts arise • Climax: conflict reaches its most suspenseful moment • Resolution: conflict is resolved

Making Inferences • Inferences are INFORMED GUESSES • Your guesses are based on your observations & your prior experiences

• When we read dramas, we make inferences about the characters’ personalities and why they act the way they do

Hints for Making Inferences • What does the writer tell you about how the character looks and acts? What do you know about people that look and act that way?

• What does the writer tell you about the way people respond to the character? What do such responses usually • What does the writer tell tell you about a you about problems the person? character faces? What do you know about similar situations?

Let’s try it together…. • “Pulling out from a wall on a folding bed, Jimmy slid back a panel in the wall and dragged out a dust-covered suitcase. He opened this and gazed fondly at the finest set of burglar’s tools in the East…In half an hour Jimmy went downstairs and through the café’. He was now dressed in tasteful and well-fitting clothes and carried his dusted and cleaned suitcase in his hand”.

1) What can you infer about how long it has been since Jimmy used his tools? 2) What connection can you make, knowing that Jimmy carries his suitcase with him?

3) Based on this evidence, what is your opinion of Jimmy? Is he a good or bad man, or a bit of both?

Making Inferences To make an inference, look for text clues and connect what the text says to what you know about life.

As we read The Diary of Anne Frank, try and connect the characters to what we have learned already about WWII, The Holocaust, and Europe in the 1940’s, to create a picture in your mind!

I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. -Anne Frank

Who was Anne Frank? • Born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1929 • At 4 yrs. old, family immigrates to Amsterdam, Netherlands to escape anti-Jewish laws • May 1940: Netherlands surrenders to Germany, Nazi occupation

Anne Frank home

Publishing the Diary

The Diary of Anne Frank By: Frances Goodrich & Albert Hackett • Before they wrote the play, Goodrich and Hackett spent ten days in Amsterdam visiting the Secret Annex and questioning Otto Frank on his memories.

• Took two years, and eight drafts to complete

• Opened on Broadway in 1955 to great acclaim

• 1956: Won a Pulitzer Why do you think Prize the writers put so much time and effort into this Otto Frank talks about Anne's diary play?