Summary
The residents of the annex use too much electricity and
exceed their ration. Anne begins to feel that Mr. Dussel is a strict
disciplinarian and has too many opinions about etiquette. She writes
that it is very difficult being “the badly brought-up center of
attention in a family of nitpickers.” Hanukkah and St. Nicholas
Day come on almost the same day, so the annex holds two celebrations.
They light the Hanukkah candles for only ten minutes, since candles
are in short supply. For St. Nicholas Day, Father hides a basket
filled with presents and a mask of Black Peter in a cabinet.
Mr. van Daan makes sausages to preserve the meat they
have bought. Mr. Dussel opens a pretend dental practice in the annex
and comically attempts to fix Mrs. van Daan’s cavities. Anne tires
of Mrs. van Daan’s incessant complaints and is annoyed that Mr.
Dussel constantly tells her to be quiet at night but then wakes
her up when he does his exercises at dawn. Anne marvels at how diplomatic
she has become while living in the annex. Mr. Kugler brings the
residents gravy packets to fill because he can find no one else
to do the job. According to Anne, however, it is a prisoner’s job.
Anne writes more about the terrible events that are happening outside.
Jews are being taken from their homes and separated from their families,
and non-Jewish children are wandering the streets in hunger. Anne
writes that both Christians and Jews want the war to end, and she
believes that her family is better off than people outside the annex.
Anne seethes that everyone is always yelling at her and
calling her “exasperating,” and she wishes she had a personality
that did not antagonize everyone. Mr. Frank thinks the war will
end soon, but the level of anxiety in the annex increases. Anne
is frightened by the sound of gunfire one night, so she crawls into
her father’s bed for comfort. Another night, Peter climbs up into
the loft and a rat bites his arm. Mr. Dussel often writes letters
to his wife and to others outside, and Mr. Frank demands that he
stop. The residents have another scare when they think they hear
burglars in the building. After that incident, the clock suddenly
stops chiming, which also upsets Anne. Later, the residents hear
a radio announcement that all Jews must be deported from Utrecht
and the other provinces of the Netherlands by the beginning of July.
Mr. Dussel’s wife sends him a package for his birthday.
Anne notes that Mr. Dussel does not share his sizable stash of personal food
with the other residents or their Dutch helpers. Although Anne knows
that her family is better off than the vast majority of Jews, she predicts
that they will look back and wonder how they lived for so long under
such difficult conditions. Mr. van Daan says he believes that the
war will end in 1943.
When Anne reaches her fourteenth birthday, her father writes her
a poem, and Margot translates it from German into Dutch.
Analysis
In this section Anne vents her frustrations at living
in the annex and dealing with the adults. Anne realizes that the
general unpleasantness of the annex and the van Daans’ and Mr. Dussel’s
stinginess pale in comparison to the horrors others are enduring
outside the annex. Nonetheless, Anne is frustrated at the adults
and does not think their behavior is warranted. She does not seem
to make much effort to understand why the adults are acting the
way they are. This oversight reminds us that although Anne has grown
up considerably since moving into the annex, she is a young girl
and still emotionally immature in certain ways. She never takes
a step back to try to understand the different pressures facing
the adults. At her age, she is still struggling to understand her
own nature and motivations, and she is not yet able to expand her
focus to include the adults and their behavior. Reading her diary,
we realize that Anne does not bear the burden of trying to protect
an entire family from the inexplicable evils of the war. On the
one hand, Anne has the perspective to realize that her situation
within the annex is not as dire as the situation outside; however,
she does not yet have the empathy to understand the cause of the
adults’ tensions.
