51 pages • 1 hour read
Alice HoffmanWhen We Flew Away: A Novel of Anne Frank Before the Diary
Alice HoffmanFiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4: “The World and the Underworld (Amsterdam, June 1941-February 1942)”
Part 4, Chapter 7 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of religious discrimination, graphic violence, bullying, illness and death, animal death, and physical abuse.
The brief omniscient introduction to Part 4 describes how the “good people” are now hiding from the monsters in the streets. Though the younger sister knows she is supposed to stay indoors, she steps out onto the roof, wishing she could fly away.
Oma’s illness becomes pronounced. She is in pain and has trouble sleeping; the family does not know she coughs up blood. Otto brings a Jewish doctor, who sends Oma to the Jewish hospital right away. A surgery cures nothing; she can only rest. Anne tries to help Oma by telling her stories.
Otto is overjoyed to hear in a long-awaited letter that his friend Mr. Straus will help secure visas for them. They are all heartened by the news, and Anne begins packing a suitcase immediately. Margot says perhaps they should take nothing and begin their lives anew, an idea Anne loves even more than taking everything she can. Weeks pass, however, with no news on the matter. Anne turns 12, but there are no festivities; the circumstances are too stressful. Margot tells her that her future birthdays will be much better.
Finally, another letter comes from Mr. Straus. He cannot help them because the US consulate in Rotterdam is shut down, and there is nowhere else to gather visas from. Otto closes the door to his room and cries. Margot takes Anne from the hall outside his door to the roof, where they can feel the sun.
In July, Miep marries her fiancé. As an Austrian, Miep was in danger of losing her permission to stay in Amsterdam, especially after she refused to join a women’s group in favor of Nazi beliefs, but marrying Jan Gies provides Miep with Dutch citizenship. Anne is thrilled to help Miep plan the wedding. Edith takes her to buy a beautiful dress, one that Anne appreciates very much and knows she will always remember. Edith stays home from the wedding with Margot, who is ill, but Anne and Otto attend; the next day all four attend the reception. The adults’ stories go on and on; Anne slips outside and dreams of falling in love. Margot joins her; they talk of the future. Margot reveals that she may want to go to Jerusalem and become a nurse or midwife. Anne compares Margot’s desire to bring life to the world to her desire to create inspirational stories for others. They make a wish on an elm tree to meet someday in Jerusalem and California.
New rules in Amsterdam dictate the removal of Jewish children from Christian schools, including the 91 Jewish children from Anne’s beloved Montessori school. In September, more laws keep Jewish people out of public places; “Forbidden for Jews” (142) signs separate them from others.
Concerned about Anne’s well-being, Otto takes her to a country hotel, Groot Warnsborn. The family went on a few trips to the country over the years, but this time, Margot and Anne’s mother stay home with Oma. On the train, Otto tells Anne stories from mythology; she especially loves the story of Persephone, who is taken to the underworld as the wife of Hades, and Demeter, her mother and harvest goddess, who misses Persephone so much that she stops blessing the earth with crops and good weather.
In the country, Anne reads a novel about four friends, and she envisions what she would write to one of the characters, Kitty, if Kitty were a real friend. Otto reads Great Expectations and compliments Dickens’s ability to convey the triumph of good over evil. When she asks Otto if he still thinks people are good at heart, he says he is not sure. But Anne insists they are, and Otto tells her she is right. Otto does not reveal the new limitations on Jewish people befalling them back home. He plans how he will soon place his business in the names of his partners, with Miep’s husband Jan on the board.
The scenery reminds Anne of a “fairyland”; walking alone, Anne spies a blue ribbon someone left behind near a stork’s nest and takes it before heading home. Anne is sad to be back in Amsterdam. She knows her experiences in the country were precious and different from previous trips with the family. Anne thinks that the soldiers in Amsterdam are worse than wolves and that her neighborhood is more dangerous than the forest. She realizes the rabbits who once thrived in the park are gone because they did not run when the soldiers came to kill them.
Part 4, Chapter 8 Summary
One of Anne’s acquaintances joins the Hitler Youth and mocks and insults her in the street. Margot pulls Anne along to keep her from stopping and saying anything. Anne is happy when, at her new all-Jewish school, the teacher is kind enough to move Hanneli into Anne’s class. Anne also makes a new friend, Jacque.
On December 8, the United States enters the war. The Franks celebrate this new reason to hope; the Americans will surely come to rescue them from the German occupation, arrests, and camps. Otto discovers that Cuba has stopped all visas; the backup plan he was relying on will not work. Otto hopes he will not have to use his alternate plan: hiding the family.
Distracted one day, Anne wanders too close to the frozen river. A German soldier tells her she is not allowed to skate. Anne stammers in German that she was watching a fish, which makes the soldier ask if she is Dutch. Margot arrives and pulls her away. They agree that Anne did nothing wrong and know that soon Jewish people will not be allowed to do anything.
Anne enjoys spending the night at Jacque’s apartment, but one cold night she almost does not go because she is worried about Oma. Oma tells her to go and not to feel guilty. In the morning, Anne wakes with a feeling of doom and runs home. Oma has died in the night. Anne cries in grief and shock but realizes Oma may not have wanted Anne to see her pass.
Anne has trouble eating and loses weight. Winter drags on. One night, Edith finds Anne in the kitchen, unable to sleep. At first, she tells Anne to go back to bed, then allows her to eat some leftovers since she feels hungry. Then she gives Anne Oma’s gold jewelry, which Oma gave Edith when she turned 18. Edith has been hiding the jewelry under the sink. Anne asks Edith to give it to her when she turns 18 instead. She sees that Edith would rescue her from the underworld as Demeter rescued Persephone.
Part 4, Chapter 9 Summary
Margot turns 16. She is happy, but when Anne asks her if 16 feels any different, Margot weeps, wondering if she will ever grow older. Anne convinces Edith to give Margot Oma’s jewelry without waiting. Edith finally sees how special Anne is and agrees. That night, she gives the jewelry to Margot while Anne pretends to be asleep. Margot is thrilled.
Jewish people begin to hide in Amsterdam. Otto secretly stocks the attic at his business’s warehouse with food and supplies. One night Margot is unnerved because she sees a strange black moth at the door, and a story from Anne is what she needs to feel better. Anne starts with “Once upon a time…” (184) and tells Margot a tale about two sisters so brave that the wolves leave them alone. These girls find a hiding place deep in the forest, a house that becomes invisible when the doors are locked. The story comforts the girls, who do not know that a month before, Hitler and his officials enacted the Final Solution, calling for the systematic murder of all Jewish people.
Another “What We Lost” passage concludes this part of the novel. Returning to the “we” voice, the passage lists the many disallowances for Jewish people in the Netherlands, such as entering public buildings, using parks, or owning radios. The passage alludes to the “Final Solution”: “They said we were the problem, they said they had a solution, and that’s when we knew the time had come” (189).
Part 4 Analysis
Part 4 leans into Anne’s developing maturity in several ways. For example, she experiences different forms of loss (Oma, the Montessori school, the chance to emigrate) but must continue on despite them. Though shaken and grieving each time, Anne rallies and adjusts; she attempts to stay strong for her sister and parents amid more formidable woes. This selflessness, evidence that she is growing up, demonstrates The Loss of Innocence in the Context of War and Genocide. At only 13 on her birthday, Anne demonstrates the courage and compassion of an adult, serving as a source of emotional support for her family under terrible circumstances.
Another representation of Anne’s developing maturity is her trip with Otto to the country. Any physical journey is an opportunity for a character’s changed mindset and growth; here, Anne allows herself to feel removed from the danger increasingly evident in Amsterdam while coming to terms with the changes in the world she has always known. Taking the blue ribbon as a sign of hope marks the beginning of a more mature, considerate Anne, one readier for new experiences in the remaining chapters (such as navigating a first romance). Her growth is proven when she returns, sad and resigned, to the apartment; she wants to cry—as a child would—but tries to prevent it, understanding now that it “would do no good” (156). Ultimately, though Otto intended the trip as a boost to Anne’s mood, her real gains in the country are maturity and fortitude for the difficulties yet to come.
Anne also demonstrates growth as a storyteller. Greek myths like the story of Demeter and Persephone offer her a way to understand her own experience through metaphor, as she compares Demeter and Persephone to her own mother and herself. She yearns to express her own experiences in writing—foreshadowing the later development of the diary for which she becomes internationally famous after her death. Additionally, with the fairy tale quality of the narrative weakening in the face of straightforward facts in Part 3, Anne now takes ownership of the fairy tale style as a tool for fighting fear and balancing bravery against persecution with the tale of two bold, wise sisters who go into hiding. These indications of Anne’s growing maturity as a storyteller serve as a prelude Part 5, where her dreams of becoming a writer grow more concrete.
Symbolic discoveries in Part 4 represent how war is impacting many in Europe. In their slow realization that not even American friends and family can help, Otto and Edith represent the fate of hundreds of thousands of Jewish people. Anne’s discovery of the blue ribbon in the countryside offers a symbol of unexpected hope. Margot discovers one of the black moths: The moth itself is a symbol of the Nazi occupation with all the destruction it brings, while Margot’s discovery suggests that people like Margot, who have tried to preserve the stability of schedules, everyday business, and hard work, now see the danger more clearly. Even more ominously, the reader discovers through the omniscient narrator what really happened to the rabbits who first thrive in the public square when the occupation begins, then later disappear: The German soldiers of the Nazi regime attacked and slaughtered them for no reason. This unstated metaphor compares the rabbits to the Jewish people and foreshadows the reader’s discovery that the “Final Solution” has already been enacted.
While mentions of deportations, arrests, and abuse convey the growing malevolence of the Nazi occupation, Chapter 9 includes the first reference to the “Final Solution.” This plan to systematically murder the Jewish people was officially put into place at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, though Hitler and other Nazi leaders had expressed similar intentions as early as 1939. This measure, the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” led to the killing of approximately 6 million people. In Chapter 9, because Anne and Margot do not know the “Final Solution” has been enacted, a juxtaposition exists between the relative safety of Anne’s fairy tale and the reality of the danger at hand.
Unlock all 51 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 9,250+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By Alice Hoffman
