From the Diary of Anne Frank · Class 10 English · First Flight: 60 flashcards
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1. Give the two reasons Anne finds writing a diary strange.
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She has never written anything before, and she believes nobody — including herself later — will want to know the private thoughts of a girl of thirteen schoolgirl.
2. Why does Anne write in spite of her doubts?
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She feels like writing, and has an even stronger wish to unload a great many things from her chest.
3. What saying does Anne recall, and when?
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That paper has more patience than people — on a day when she was feeling depressed, bored and listless, with her chin in her hands.
4. Why does paper have more patience than people?
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A page cannot interrupt, judge, grow tired or repeat what was said in confidence, so it can be told anything.
5. How does Anne describe her notebook?
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As a hard-backed notebook ceremoniously called a 'diary'.
6. What is the real reason Anne starts the diary?
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She does not have a friend — one true friend to confide in.
7. List what Anne says she does have.
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Loving parents, a sixteen-year-old sister, about thirty people she can call friends, loving aunts and a good home.
8. What can Anne talk about with her friends?
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Only ordinary everyday things; she cannot bring herself to go further, and they never get any closer.
9. Whom does Anne blame for the distance between herself and her friends?
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Possibly herself — she says that maybe it is her fault that they do not confide in each other.
10. Who is Kitty?
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The name Anne gives her diary so that it becomes the long-awaited friend she writes to, rather than a record of facts.
11. Why does Anne provide a brief sketch of her life?
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Because no one would understand a word of her stories to Kitty if she plunged straight in — though she says she dislikes doing it.
12. At what ages did Anne's parents marry?
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Her father was thirty-six and her mother twenty-five.
13. When and where was Margot born, and when was Anne?
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Margot in Frankfurt in 1926; Anne on 12 June 1929.
14. When did the family move to Holland?
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Her father emigrated in 1933, her mother followed in September, Margot arrived in December and Anne in February.
15. Where did Margot and Anne stay before joining their parents?
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With their grandmother in Aachen.
16. How does Anne describe her own arrival in Holland?
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Wrongly — she was put on the table among the presents on Margot’s birthday, not on her own.
17. Who was Mrs Kuperus?
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Anne's teacher in the sixth form and the headmistress; at the end of the year both were in tears as they said a heartbreaking farewell.
18. What happened to Anne's grandmother?
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She fell ill in the summer of 1941 and had an operation, and died in January 1942.
19. How does Anne show her love for her grandmother?
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She writes that no one knows how often she thinks of her and still loves her, and her grandmother's candle was lit at the 1942 birthday celebration.
20. What date does the opening section of the extract reach?
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20 June 1942 — the present date and the solemn dedication of her diary.
21. What date is this entry, and what is the class waiting for?
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Saturday, 20 June 1942 — the meeting at which teachers would decide who moved up to the next form and who was kept back.
22. How is the class behaving before the meeting?
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It is quaking in its boots, and half of them are betting on the result on the results.
23. Who staked their holiday savings, and who laughed at them?
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C.N. and Jacques staked their entire holiday savings; Anne and G.N. laughed themselves silly at them.
24. Which subject was Anne unsure about?
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Maths — the subject taught by Mr Keesing.
25. How many teachers did Anne have?
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Nine — seven men and two women — and she got along pretty well with all of them except Mr Keesing.
26. How does Anne describe Mr Keesing?
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As the old fogey of a maths master — an old-fashioned person who had been annoyed with her for ages because she talked so much.
27. What was Anne's first punishment?
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Extra homework: an essay on the subject 'A Chatterbox'.
28. What did Anne do when she was first set the essay?
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She decided to worry about it later — she jotted down the title, tucked the notebook in her bag and tried to keep quiet.
29. What did Anne identify as the real difficulty of the essay?
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That filling a page is easy enough — the hard part was thinking up reasons good enough to prove that talking is necessary.
30. Summarise the argument of Anne's first essay.
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Talking is a student's trait; she would do her best to keep it under control; but she could never cure herself, since her mother talked as much or more, and inherited traits cannot be helped.
31. How did Mr Keesing react to the first essay?
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He had a good laugh at her arguments.
32. Why did Anne receive a second essay?
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Because she proceeded to talk her way through the very next lesson.
33. What was the title of the second essay, and what does the word mean?
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'An Incorrigible Chatterbox' — incorrigible means something that cannot be corrected.
34. What was the third essay title?
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'Quack, Quack, Quack, Said Mistress Chatterbox'.
35. How did the class react to the third title, and how did Anne?
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The class roared; Anne laughed too, though she had nearly exhausted her ingenuity on the subject of chatterboxes.
36. What did Anne decide about Mr Keesing's joke?
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That he was trying to play a joke on her with the ridiculous subject, and that she would make sure the joke was on him.
37. Who helped Anne write the third essay, and how?
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Her friend Sanne, who was good at poetry, offered to help her write it from beginning to end in verse — and Anne jumped for joy.
38. What was the poem about?
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A duck as mother, a swan as father, and three ducklings whom the father killed for chattering too much — the joke being aimed squarely at Mr Keesing.
39. How did Mr Keesing respond to the poem?
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He took the joke in good part, read it to the class with his own comments, and read it to several other classes as well.
40. What changed after the poem?
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Anne was allowed to talk and was given no more extra homework; on the contrary, Mr Keesing was always making jokes.
41. What kind of life does the extract show Anne living?
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An ordinary, sociable school life — a warm family, about thirty friends, nine teachers, classroom bets and a quarrel with her maths master.
42. Which quality of Anne's is most evident in the extract?
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Honesty, including about herself — she admits that the coldness of her friendships may be her own fault.
43. Give two examples of Anne's humour at her own expense.
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Calling her notebook stiff-backed and only 'grandly referred to' as a diary, and saying she was set down on the table as a birthday present for Margot.
44. What shows Anne's precision as an observer?
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She counts and names — nine teachers, seven men and two women; about thirty friends; two boys who staked their holiday savings; three essay titles in order.
45. Name three people Anne is clearly fond of in the extract.
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Her father, the most adorable father she has ever seen; Mrs Kuperus, with whom she wept at parting; and her grandmother, of whom she still thinks often.
46. How does inventing Kitty change the way the diary reads?
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Because there is someone to write to, the entries read as conversation — with asides, jokes and anticipated objections — rather than as a record of facts.
47. Give one example of Anne anticipating her reader's objection.
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She writes that no one will believe a girl of thirteen is entirely alone in the world — and then answers the objection.
48. What can a diary not do, as a form?
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It is written forwards without knowing the ending, so it cannot be shaped towards a conclusion or corrected with hindsight.
49. What does the diary gain from that limitation?
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Immediacy and honesty — we get the thought at the moment it was had, including sentences the writer would later have deleted.
50. When was the diary given to Anne, and when is the Mr Keesing entry dated?
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It was a present for her thirteenth birthday on 12 June 1942; the entry is dated Saturday, 20 June 1942.
51. When and where did the family go into hiding?
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From July 1942, in concealed rooms above the Amsterdam office where her father Otto Frank had worked.
52. How long did the group remain in hiding, and how did it end?
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Two years, until they were betrayed and transported to the concentration camp system.
53. Where did Anne die, and of what?
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Of typhus, in Bergen-Belsen, within days of her sister Margot.
54. Who survived, and what did he do?
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Otto, her father, was the one member of the group to live, and he went back to Amsterdam, found the diary had been saved and had it published.
55. Under what title was the diary published in English?
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The Diary of a Young Girl.
56. What is the date of the diary's final entry?
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1 August 1944.
57. What does the reader know that Anne does not, reading this extract?
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That the family would go into hiding within weeks, would be betrayed, and that Anne would not survive the war.
58. Was Anne right that nobody would be interested in her musings?
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Right about the ordinary case, wrong about her own — the quality of the writing, her honesty and the history around her made the diary one of the world's most read books.
59. Why does it matter that this extract contains no persecution at all?
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Because it records exactly what was ordinary about the life that was about to be destroyed, which is why a school quarrel reads so heavily.
60. How should a character answer about Anne be written?
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As claims supported by evidence from the text — not as a list of adjectives.
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