Anne further reveals the turmoil of her feelings about her family with startling frankness. “I’m not jealous of Margot, never have been. I don’t envy her good looks or her beauty. It is only that I long for Daddy’s real love: not only as his child, but for me—Anne, myself” (November 7, 1942). Anne feels again and again that her mother is unfair to her, and occasionally she feels that her mother is inadequate as a mother, yet Anne does try very hard not to pass too severe a judgment on her for this. Her remarks here, however, reveal a very perceptive and sensitive girl of thirteen: “Mummy and her failings are something I find harder to bear than anything else. I don’t know how to keep it all to myself. . . . I have in my mind’s eye an image of what a perfect mother and wife should be; and in her whom I must call ‘Mother’ I find no trace of that image. . . . Sometimes I believe that God wants to try me, both now and later on; I must become good through my own efforts, without examples and without good advice. . . . From whom but myself shall I get comfort? As I need comforting often, I frequently feel weak, and dissatisfied with myself; my short-comings are too great. I know this, and every day I try to improve myself, again and again” (November 7, 1942).
Anne finds a great deal of solace in her diary; it is, in effect, her best friend, her confidante; she calls it “Kitty,” and on its pages she feels absolutely free to complain of her sense of frustration at not being able to give vent to her feelings. But, most of all, she feels frustrated because she has no real person whom she can truly confide in—and receive encouragement from—just through expressing her feelings. Only her diary can do that for her.
Under normal circumstances, Anne would probably have confided her feelings to a friend, but these were not normal circumstances, and the only outlet for Anne’s emotions lay within the pages of the small, red-checkered, cloth-covered diary.
In addition, Anne also gives factual accounts of some humorous events that occur, such as the splitting of a seam on a sack of beans which Peter was carrying up the stairs, so that “a positive hailstorm of brown beans came pouring down and rattled down the stairs . . . [I was] standing at the bottom of the stairs, like a little island in the middle of a sea of beans!” (November 9, 1942). She also recounts the serious discussion which precedes the decision as to whether or not they should take in an eighth person, an elderly dentist, Albert Düssel, who will have to move into Anne’s room because of a lack of space.
Living in such cramped conditions with seven other people is bound to take its toll on anyone, particularly when discovery means almost certain death, yet Anne always tries to accept their situation in a positive way and to keep her spirits up: “Quite honestly, I’m not so keen that a stranger should use my things, but one must be pre-pared to make some sacrifices for a good cause, so I shall make my little offering with a good will. ‘If we can save someone, then everything else is of secondary importance,’ says Daddy, and he’s absolutely right” (November 19, 1942).
That very evening, bad news from outside reaches the group in the “Secret Annexe,” and Anne describes it vividly in her diary: “When it is dark, I often see rows of good, innocent people accompanied by crying children, walking on and on, in charge of a couple of these chaps, bullied and knocked about until they almost drop.” Despite the difficulties and privations of living in hiding, however, Anne realizes that she is far more fortunate than a great many of her friends: “. . . who have now been delivered into the hands of the cruelest brutes that walk the earth. And all because they are Jews!” (November 19,
1942).
The Jewish festival of lights (Hanukah) occurs almost at the same time as the Dutch Festival of Saint Nicholas Day, and the members of the little group exchange gifts and light the traditional candles of the festival, although the group keeps them alight for only ten minutes because of the shortage of candles. Their “protectors” give them presents for the Dutch Festival of Saint Nicholas Day, attaching a little poem for each person and trying their best to lighten the tedium of their caged lives. And tedium it is—rarely, but occasionally, relieved. For instance, Anne describes the lengthy, prudent process whereby Mr. Van Daan prepares sausages, and then she tells in hilarious detail how the dentist, Mr. Düssel examines the hysterically nervous Mrs. Van Daan’s teeth, reminding Anne of “a picture from the Middle Ages entitled ‘A Quack At Work’” (December 10, 1942). She also describes the scene which she can see in the street below the window and the joy of the group in hiding at receiving extra rations of butter for Christmas. To divert themselves, they all talk about what they will do “when the war is over” although they do not forget to feel sorry for the people outside who are taken away from their homes each day, or are unable to obtain enough food.
