Roar Post #1 [Pages1-68]

SUMMARY

Anne Frank seems to have everything that a girl would want. She has a few girlfriends, admirers who absolutely adore her, and a loving family. But deep inside, Anne is not happy, because she doesn’t have that one true friend who she can confide to and share her innermost feelings with. For that reason, she thinks of this diary as her friend. In addition to that, she creates a character known as Kitty to talk to (because saying Dear Diary is too plain). She starts off by writing about her life before the diary. She has an older sister named Margot who was born in Frankfurt am Main in Germany in 1926. Anne herself was born on June 12, 1929. Her father, Otto Frank received a job that allowed him to immigrate to Holland in 1933, and her mother, Edith Hollander Frank followed. Margot and Anne stayed in Germany for a short while before joining their parents in Holland. Life was good for a while, but eventually Hitler’s anti Jewish laws found their way to Holland, and Anne and her family were caught in the midst (since they were Jewish as well). The restrictions were endless, ranging from being forbidden to ride cars and bicycles to being forbidden to attend theaters, movies or other kinds of entertainment. To make her life even more oppressive, she had to wear a yellow star to signify that she was Jewish.

            Despite all of these problems, life still goes on for Anne. In school, she is a very talkative girl, and usually gets in trouble for talking. At her graduation ceremony at the Jewish Lyceum, she received a D, a C- in algebra and all the rest were B-‘s, B’s, and B+’s. Her parents do not worry about report card grades, because to them, as long as she is healthy, happy, and doesn’t talk back too much , they are satisfied.

            But then more problems arise, because Margot receives a call up notice from the SS. Upon hearing this, Anne’s father decides the family has to go into hiding. When packing, Anne puts in her diary first, followed by curlers, letters and handkerchiefs rather than clothes. They left at five thirty in the morning, and Anne has to leave behind her beloved cat Moortje. The hiding place was decided to be in the father’s office building, since he had few workers there and they were all people they could trust. It had many sinple looking passageways and doors but really, is like amaze of sorts, and the Secret Annex was to be the Frank family’s living quarters. Life in the Annex is tiring at times, and the silence is horrible. The only visitors that they can have are Miep, her husband Jan, Bep Voskuijl, Mr.Voskuijl, Mr. Kugler, Mr.Kleiman and Mrs.Kleiman (friends & co-workers of Anne’s father). Although they are hiding and can never leave the Annex, Anne says that the Annex is the ideal place to hide and the family has done some minor decorating to make the Annex feel more like home. Nevertheless, they still can’t make too much noise because the workers downstairs might hear them.

            Anne notes that her parents seem to treat her more harshly then her sister Margot. She feels as though she doesn’t fit in with the rest of family (almost like a black sheep).

Eventually, Mr.van Daan and Mrs.van Daan and their son Peter arrived to live with the Frank family and there were now a total of 7 people living in the Secret Annex. However, the Frank family do have their fare share of disputes with the van Daan family.

            Life in the Annex can be boring, and a great source of comfort is reading books. However, Anne is not allowed to read adult books while her sister Margot can (she feels that this is unfair). As time progresses however, Anne is allowed to read more adult themed books.

QUOTE

“ It’s just that I’d like to feel that Father really loves me, not because I’m his child, but because I’m me, Anne” (Frank 63).

REACTION

I’ve got to admit, Anne Frank is an extremely good writer. She writes with such a style that is down to earth and truthful and easy to enjoy. Her knowledge of words such as hypochondriac are amazing, since she started writing this diary at age thirteen, which is younger than me. I actually had to go and look up a lot of the words that Anne already knew. This is probably because Anne reads so many books. In fact, she even gets them for birthday presents. Can you believe that? I get rather disappointed when I receive a book as a present. This is one thing that I truly admire about Anne, her passion for reading and writing, as she does it on a daily basis.

Now I want to say that I connected with her in so many ways. To begin with, she mentions in page 17 that her parents are not strict about grades as many other parents do. They only care if Anne is healthy, happy, and doesn’t talk back too much. I can connect so much to what she says here, because my parents are very similar. If I bring home a test with a bad grade, then although they will be sad, they will not lash out at me and scold me for hours on end. Another connection that I had was when on pages 28 and 29, she mentions how she has noticed that she doesn’t fit in with the rest of her family. Sometimes, I do feel this way with my family as well. Don’t get me wrong, I do love them very much, just as Anne has tried to tell the reader. However, I think that Anne says it best when she says that  “ I love them, but only because they’re Mother and Margot. I don’t give a darn about them as people “(Frank 62). Although my feelings are not intense as hers, I feel there is truth to it, and maybe every teenager has felt this at least once in their life. The feeling that you get when no one in your family understands you, and for a few seconds, you just close your eyes and want to not be affiliated with your family in any way whatsoever. I also feel that Anne is probably writing right after an argument with her mother, because usually as humans, we tend to blurt out things that we don’t necessarily mean. But then again, since she does mention this conflict with her mother more than once in the diary, I can assume that maybe she isn’t as close to her mother as an average teenager would be.

This leads to the larger story as a whole. The quote mentioned above on page 63 is what I feel is the quote that best represents this first section of the book. I believe so because time and time again Anne talks about how she is closer to her father than her sister and mother. But another difficulty that exists is the fact that her father doesn’t blatantly express his love for Anne. He does show that he cares for her and her well being, but Anne wants her father’s love on a deeper level. She feels that her father is too reserved to open up his feelings. In addition to this, she is hurt by the fact that he treats her sister differently than her because he tends to take Margot’s side in an argument or dispute. On the plus side, he is the only one in the family who understands her. Therefore, as you can see, there are ups and downs in their relationship, and Anne wants their relationship to be 100% up.