Explore "Jo" by Anne Frank on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Jo stands beside the open window in her bedroom and takes a deep breath of fresh air. She's hot, and the air feels good on her tear-stained face.
She raises her eyes higher and higher until they finally come to rest on the moon and the stars.
'Oh,' she moans. 'I can't go on, I can't even summon the energy to feel sad. Paul has left me, I'm all alone, perhaps for good, but I just can't go on, I can't do anything, I only know how desperate I feel. ' And while Jo keeps on gazing at nature, which is revealing itself in all its splendour tonight, she grows calm. While the wind whips through the trees outside the house, while the sky darkens and the stars take cover behind the big, thick clouds, looking like so many wads of blotting paper in the cloudy light and forming every imaginable shape, Jo suddenly feels that she's not at all desperate, that she is indeed capable of doing something, that no one can take away her inner happiness, which is hers and hers alone. 'No one,' she whispers, without being aware of it. 'Not even Paul.'
After standing at the window for an hour, Jo has recovered. She's still sad, but no longer desperate. Everyone who takes a long and deep enough look into nature - and therefore into themselves - will be cured, just as Jo was, of all despair.
UNDATED