Anwar was born and raised in Medan, North Sumatra, before moving to Batavia with his mother in 1940, where he began to enter the local literary circles.

[3] After his parents' divorce,[4] his father continued to financially support him and his mother,[5] who moved to Batavia (Jakarta after Indonesia's independence).

For example, in 1943, when he first approached the magazine Pandji Pustaka to submit his poems, most were rejected for being too individualistic and not keeping with the spirit of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

[2] He wrote his last poem, "Cemara Menderai Sampai Jauh" ("Fir Trees Are Sown Off Into the Distance"), in 1949.

[7] The Dutch scholar of Indonesian literature A. Teeuw suggests that Anwar was aware that he would die young, pointing to "Jang Terampas dan Jang Putus" ("The Seized and the Broken"), which has a theme of surrender,[8] and predicts that he will be buried in Karet.

[10] Teeuw notes that it is difficult, if not impossible, to identify a single theme which unites all of Anwar's work, as his poems reflect his state of mind at the time of writing.

Individual poems, though at times full of excitement, generally reflect a fear of death or depression, to the point that it is impossible to identify "the true Chairil [Anwar]".

[a][11] Aside from that, Anwar's works are multi-interpretable, with every reader able to take what they want from his poems; Teeuw notes that the Japanese overlords read "Diponegoro" as a challenge to white colonialists, Indonesia's Christians read "Doa" ("Prayer") and "Isa" ("Jesus") as proof that Anwar had a positive view of Christianity, and Indonesia's Muslims read "Dimesjid" ("At the Mosque") as proof that Anwar "met with Allah in a mosque and fought with Him".

Anwar also exploited the morphology of Indonesian, using prefixes and suffixes to make the language more dynamic and give a stronger impression.

He notes that one instance was due to necessity, as at the time Anwar needed the money to pay for a vaccination.

[17] Balfas notes that even though Anwar evidently used other people's poems as the basis for some of his, he generally changed them enough and brought new ideas to make them his own.

He also notes that many of them were essays written by young writers, intent on discovering themselves through Anwar's works.

[c][19] Leftist critics, including those of Lekra, see Anwar's Westernized individualism as being against the spirit of the Indonesian National Revolution, which they define as being for the people.