From the Diary of Anne Frank: Chapter Notes CBSE Class 10 English

From the Diary of Anne Frank Class X: Anne Frank was one of the most famous victims of the Holocaust. This story recounts why she began writing a diary. It also describes an incident from her school life. In the diary, Anne writes about her life, childhood, and various other things.

Summary: From the Diary of Anne Frank

Broadly, From the Diary of Anne Frank can be divided into:

• Anne’s Feelings about Writing a Diary
• Anne’s Need for a Friend
• A Brief History of Anne’s Life
• Anne at School
• Mr. Keesing and the Three Essays

Anne’s Feelings about Writing a Diary

• Anne feels strange to write in a diary as she has never written anything before.
• She also feels that nobody would be interested in reading the thoughts of a teenager like her.
• But that doesn’t matter to her. She wants to write and needs to get many things off her chest.

Anne’s Need for a Friend

• Anne believes that ‘paper has more patience than people’.
• Although she has thirty people she considers friends, she can only discuss ordinary things with them.
• She yearns for a true friend to whom she can confide her secrets.
• She doesn’t want to use the diary to merely note down facts like other people. Rather, she wants to treat it as a friend. She addresses it as ‘Kitty’.

A Brief History of Anne’s Life

• Anne believes that nobody will be able to understand her stories unless she provides a brief history of her life.
• Her parents, Otto and Edith, emigrated from Frankfurt, Germany to Holland in 1933.
• Anne and her older sister, Margot, went to live with their grandmother in Aachen. The girls joined their parents in Holland a few months later.
• Anne began schooling right away. She formed a deep bond with her teacher, Mrs. Kuperus, in the sixth form.
• Anne’s grandmother fell ill and underwent an operation in 1941; she died in 1942.
• Anne still loves her grandmother and thinks about her often. She lit a candle in her honour on her birthday.
• Anne ends her life history by saying that she and her family are doing well.

Anne at School

• Anne’s class is terrified about the upcoming teachers’ meeting that will decide which students will advance to the next grade.
• The students laugh, joke and make bets with each other.
• Anne believes that there are ‘many dummies’ in the class, and a ‘quarter’ of the class should be held back.
• She also refers to teachers as ‘the most unpredictable creatures on earth’.
• She isn’t very worried for herself or her girlfriends. The only subject that makes her tense is maths.
• She also gets along pretty well with most of her teachers.

Mr. Keesing and the Three Essays

• Anne calls her maths teacher, Mr Keesing, an ‘old fogey’.
• He was annoyed with her for talking too much in class and assigned her extra homework. She was to write an essay titled ‘A Chatterbox’.
• Mr. Keesing laughed at Anne’s arguments in the essay. Later, however, he told her write another essay entitled ‘An Incorrigible Chatterbox’. Anne did a good job writing this essay as well.
• Lastly, she was to write an essay entitled ‘Quack, Quack, Quack, Said Mistress Duck’.
• Anne knew Mr. Keesing was playing a joke on her. She intended to write something original to turn the joke on him.
• With the help of her friend, Sanne, she wrote a beautiful poem about a family of ducks. In the poem, three baby ducklings were bitten to death by their father for quacking too much.
• Mr. Keesing was impressed and shared the poem with the class. Since then, he hasn’t assigned Anne any extra homework for talking too much.

THEMES

The major theme of the story is The Loneliness of Adolescence vs Hope.

• Despite being a teenager with a loving family and friends, Anne often feels alone.
• She feels that she lacks a confidante, someone to whom she can reveal her deepest secrets. This feeling drives her to write a diary.
• It helps dispel some of her loneliness, and gives her hope in the form of an outlet to vent her feelings.

CHARACTERS

The excerpt provides a brief glimpse into two main characters:

• Anne Frank
• Mr. Keesing

Anne Frank

Anne is an adolescent girl who is the narrator of the story.

Disillusioned: Anne’s assertion that ‘paper has more patience than people’ indicates that she is disillusioned with people and their inability to be good listeners.

Loving: Anne’s love for her family is evident when she refers to her father as ‘adorable’ and mentions how she still loves and misses her deceased grandmother.

Sarcastic: Anne’s sarcasm shines through when she uses phrases such as ‘the most unpredictable creatures on earth’ and ‘old fogey’ to describe her teachers.

Intelligent: Anne’s wit and intelligence are displayed throughout the story. She writes something fun and innovative every time Mr. Keesing challenges her to write an essay.

Talkative: Anne’s talkative nature becomes the highlight of the latter half of the story and lands her in trouble with Mr. Keesing. Anne attributes her talkativeness to her mother and calls it an ‘inherited’ trait.

Mr. Keesing

Mr. Keesing is Anne’s maths teacher.

Stern: Mr. Keesing’s stern nature is revealed when he keeps assigning Anne extra homework for being talkative in class.

Jovial: Despite being stern, Mr. Keesing is quite jovial. He laughs at Anne’s intelligent arguments in her essays and even begins making jokes himself at the end of the story.

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