Chapter 4 — From the Diary of Anne Frank

Anneliese Marie Frank (1929–1945) was a German-Jewish girl who went into hiding with her family in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. Her diary was given to her for her thirteenth birthday on June 12, 1942. She kept the diary because she wanted a friend to confide in—someone who would listen to her thoughts and feelings, which is why she treats the diary as an imaginary friend named 'Kitty'.

Anne uses this saying to explain why she trusts a diary more than real people. Paper doesn't judge, interrupt, or lose interest the way people do. She feels she can tell the diary everything without fear of judgment or rejection, making it a more patient listener than any actual person in her life.

Anne explains that on the surface she seems to have everything—a loving family, a sister, about thirty people she calls friends, and a good home. However, with all of them she can only talk about ordinary everyday things. She cannot confide in them about deeper personal matters. They never seem to get truly close to each other, which is why she feels she lacks one true friend.

Mr Keesing is the maths teacher—described as 'the old fogey'—who was annoyed with Anne for ages because she talked so much in class. After several warnings, he assigned her extra homework: to write an essay on the subject 'A Chatterbox'. Anne then wrote three pages arguing that talking is a student's trait and that it's inherited from her mother, so she couldn't fully cure herself of it. Mr Keesing had a good laugh, but when Anne continued talking, he assigned a second essay titled 'An Incorrigible Chatterbox'.

When Mr Keesing punished Anne with a third, ridiculous essay assignment—'Quack, Quack, Quack, Said Mistress Chatterbox'—Anne decided to turn the joke back on him. With help from her friend Sanne, who was good at poetry, Anne wrote a poem in verse about a mother duck and a father swan with three baby ducklings who were bitten to death by the father because they quacked too much. Mr Keesing took the joke the right way, read the poem to the class and to several other classes, and afterward allowed Anne to talk freely without assigning more homework.

Anne uses personification—she treats the diary as if it were a person, a friend she can confide in. She even says she wants the diary to 'be my friend' and names it 'Kitty' to enhance this image. This makes the inanimate diary object feel alive and like a trusted companion to whom she can tell her secrets.

Anne's father, Otto Frank, married her mother, Edith Hollander Frank, when he was thirty-six and she was twenty-five. Anne's sister Margot was born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1926. Anne herself was born on June 12, 1929. The family emigrated to Holland in 1933 to escape Nazi persecution. Anne's grandmother died in January 1942, and this loss deeply affected Anne.

In the diary entry of June 20, 1942, Anne writes that the entire class is 'quaking in its boots' because the teachers were about to decide which students would move up to the next form and which would be kept back. The idiom means the class was shaking with fear and nervousness about their exam results.

Anne says she gets along pretty well with all her teachers—there are nine of them, seven men and two women. However, she also states that 'teachers are the most unpredictable creatures on earth', suggesting that their behaviour and decisions are difficult to predict or understand. Mr Keesing is an example: she expected him to punish her further, but instead he appreciated her clever poem.

Anne's grandmother fell ill in the summer of 1941 and had to have an operation, so Anne's birthday passed with little celebration that year. Her grandmother died in January 1942. Anne writes, 'No one knows how often I think of her and still love her.' On her birthday in 1942, Anne's parents lit a candle for her grandmother along with Anne's birthday candles to make up for the lost celebration.

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