Mr Van Daan Character Traits

Yelling, anger, and selfishness. This is what you usually get from Mr. Van Daan. In the Diary of Anne Frank by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, Mr. Van Daan is a very ill-tempered man, always yelling at the kids. He is also pretty self centered which leads him to be very hypocritical too. These three traits show strongly throughout the play when times her a little rough and there are a lot of quotes backing these claims up too. The first trait is his ill-temperedness. This trait is present almost the entire play. A quote backing this up is on page 558 and says “(to Anne) Isn’t it bad enough here without your sprawling all over the place. This excerpt shows how ill-tempered Mr. Van Daan is because Anne is afraid at the moment from hearing a man’s voice and yells at her. Instead of trying to calm her down he just decides to yell at her for being scared and for sprawling on the

Van Daan is. The first example of this is on page 559 and states “ One package. Miep only brought me one package.”. This shows how Mr. Van Daan seems to not care that Miep is risking her life for him to get cigarettes, he just wants more than she brought. Another example of this trait is on page 560 and says “ Why aren’t you nice and quiet like your sister Margot?”. This example displays how self centered he is because he sounds like he doesn’t care at all about Anne’s feelings. If you were told you yourself weren’t good enough and should be more like someone else, you would feel terrible. This is basically what Mr. Van Daan is conveying to Anne. The final excerpt that shows this trait is “At last I’ll have some cigarettes.” which is on page 563. This proves he is self centered because at the time, Miep is arriving and this quote presents his thoughts as they should have brought cigarettes sooner. It shows he isn’t caring of the challenge it is to get thos cigarettes for him. These are quotes that show Mr. Van Daan on how self centered he