Question

What do these statements tell you about Anne Frank as a person?

(i) We don’t seem to be able to get any closer, and that’ the problem. Maybe it’ my fault that we don’t confide in each other.

(ii) I don’t want to jot down the facts in this diary the way most people would, but I want the diary to be my friend.

(iii) Margot went to Holland in December, and I followed in February, when I was plunked down on the table as a birthday present for Margot.

(iv) If you ask me, there are so many dummies that about a quarter of the class should be kept back, but teachers are the most unpredictable creatures on earth.

(v) Anyone could ramble on and leave big spaces between the words, but the trick was to come up with convincing arguments to prove the necessity of taking.

Answer 1

(i) These lines show that Anne had no true friend whom she could confide in. She even put the blame on herself that the fault might be hers.

(ii) This line shows that Anne really considered her diary as a friend whom she could trust and narrate all her stories to. She did not want just a diary in which she could write down the facts like others did. She considered it as her friend and named her Kitty.

(iii) This statement shows that Anne was a fun-loving person. She was witty and knew how to present things in a funny way. She narrated this incident with a lot of fun. The use of ‘plunked down’ shows her sense of humor.

(iv) This statement shows that she had an opinion on everything. She thought that a quarter of her class was full of dummies, signifying that she herself was intelligent enough to make it to the next class. She thought of teachers as the most unpredictable creatures on earth because nobody could say which students would fail and which students would be passed on to the next class.

(v) This statement shows that Anne knew a lot about writing. She was given the task of writing an essay as a punishment. She took it with full vigor. She did not want to write it like others who merely left big spaces between the words to make the essay look voluminous. She knew that the trick was to come up with a convincing argument to prove the necessity of talking. She was different in her approach from everybody else.