Perspective

The work in its entirety is written from Etty Hillesum's viewpoint. She is the sole narrator of the diary entries and the letters from the Westerbork concentration camp. Since An Interrupted Life is essentially a memoir, one would expect that it would be written from the perspective of the individual who lived the events described. What makes this memoir so unusual is the fact that everything Hillesum writes about is happening in the moment and not about what went on in the past. Thus, the reader is given a "real time" type of account of the author's life. In addition, it is worth noting that by being able to read Hillesum's diaries and letters from her period of captivity one has the sense of her in a "before-and-after" way. That is to say, in the beginning the diary serves as a snapshot of a young woman who chronicles...