96 pages • 3 hours read
Monica HesseGirl in the Blue Coat
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 6-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary
Hanneke has not seen Ollie since Bas’s memorial service, and his presence brings up memories of his brother. Ollie asks to take a walk with Hanneke; on it, he asks her why she was at the Lyceum. His friend, Judith, is the secretary who stopped her. She evades answering until he asks if she is a member of the NSB (the Dutch Nazi party). He also asks if she is a het verzeti, a member of the resistance, and she replies, “No, Ollie, I’m not insane” (63). Then, she tells him the truth. He invites her to a dinner party where she can speak with Judith. On the walk back, they run into two German soldiers, and Ollie handles them expertly. At home, Hanneke thinks more about her time with Bas, narrating the last time she saw him before writing, “That’s not what really happened. I’m not ready to think about what really happened” (68).
Chapter 7 Summary
This chapter begins on the second day of the narrative, Wednesday. Hanneke brings cigarettes to Mrs. de Vries, who is upset about the brand and seems not to understand that getting cigarettes at all is a feat. One of her twin sons complains that it’s “crowded” in the apartment, and Hanneke leaves disgusted with the family (71). Next, she heads to Ollie’s dinner party at the Municipal University of Amsterdam. Having chosen not to go to college, she feels defensive. There, she meets Ollie’s friends Willem and Leo, who explain that small meetings are best for “the work that [they] do” (75). It slowly dawns on Hanneke that she is at a resistance meeting, not a supper club, but when Judith arrives along with her friend, Sanne, she decides to stay. The group is looking for a way to get rations to Jewish families, and it’s clear they want Hanneke’s help. At the end of the meeting, Judith gives Hanneke the contents of Mirjam’s desk and tells Hanneke that her cousin might know more about Mirjam. They agree to meet at the Schouwburg Theater, which is now a deportation center.
Chapter 8 Summary
Ollie walks Hanneke home. She is angry at him for inviting her to a resistance meeting, telling him, “I’m an Aryan poster girl, remember, Ollie? I don’t help the resistance, I find black market cheese” (90). Ollie tells her that the resistance in fact needs both Aryan-appearing girls and additional rations—and he remembers a 14-year-old Hanneke speaking up against Nazism at his family’s dinner table. Hanneke protests that he doesn’t know everything about her and implies once again that she feels guilt related to Bas’s death. As they talk, they run into two soldiers—the same ones whom Ollie distracted the night before. Ollie tells them that the two are engaged, and the soldiers ask them to kiss. They do.
Back at home, the kiss leads Hanneke to reveal the truth about the last time she saw Bas. He came back to her house to deliver a letter to read in case of his death. Telling him it was bad luck; she tore it up and threw it away. This action torments her in her dreams.
Chapters 6-8 Analysis
These chapters bring Hanneke face-to-face with her memories of Bas, as well as her role in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam, highlighting The Necessity and Danger of Keeping Secrets. Throughout the narrative, Hanneke directly addresses the reader, a method writers use to make their protagonists more relatable or vulnerable. These asides establish Hanneke as an unreliable narrator; she sometimes notes that she has told a lie and sometimes notes that she’s not ready to discuss something yet. It is suggested that this is not only because she doesn’t want others to know her darkest secrets and her biggest regrets, but also because she herself is not ready to fully acknowledge them. When she sees Ollie, Bas’s serious, reserved older brother and he asks her to join the resistance, she is finally forced to spell out the source of her guilt and shame.
At the resistance meeting, Hanneke thinks about the foolishness of the young university students: They are taking personal risks rather than focusing on survival. As they reveal detail after detail about the deportations and possible murder of Jewish people, though, she realizes that the effects of Nazism may be much worse than what she has already seen and guessed. People are dying. This knowledge further inspires her instinct to protect herself and focus on Mirjam rather than looking at the entire, impossibly ugly and difficult picture. In these chapters, the author discusses possible reactions to fascism and oppression; Hanneke stands in contrast to those who try to appease the Nazis, thinking it will protect them. Her small-scale resistance is presented as a viable form of resistance to oppression—surviving and finding Mirjam means two lives saved, which is not insignificant. This is also reinforced when Ollie tells Hanneke that she is better than she believes she is—that she might have the courage, conviction, and skills necessary to make a difference in the resistance. Her black-market connections open the possibility of helping others, even though her participation there is illegal, highlighting her potential for Personal Transformation During Wartime.
Hanneke’s memories of Bas introduce the theme of Conflicts Between Love and Friendship. As the novel progresses, the characters find their emotional attachments strained and their loyalties tested. Hanneke, in particular, has a strained relationship with Elsbeth, which develops in the coming chapters. Misunderstandings arise between characters when they cannot communicate the expectations and boundaries of each relationship, whether they are ones of romantic love or friendship. Hanneke’s guilt over Bas’s death is the main barrier to her accepting his feelings and moving forward in her life without regret. Her emotional stasis is reflected in her choice to tear up Bas’s last letter. Because she never read his final words, she assumes that he blames her for his death. Likewise, she thinks Ollie would blame her for destroying the letter and resent her for depriving his family of Bas’s final words. Throughout the second half of the novel, mainly through the parallel of Amalia’s situation, she will learn that balancing these relationships requires mutual understanding, trust, and letting go of blame.
