Girl in the Blue Coat

Use these essay questions as writing and critical thinking exercises for all levels of writers, and to build their literary analysis skills by requiring textual references throughout the essay.

Differentiation Suggestion: For English learners or struggling writers, strategies that work well include graphic organizers, sentence frames or starters, group work, or oral responses.

Scaffolded Essay Questions

Student Prompt: Write a short (1-3 paragraph) response using one of the below bulleted outlines. Cite details from the novel over the course of your response that serve as examples and support.

1. Compare and contrast Hanneke’s friendship with Elsbeth and Mirjam’s friendship with Amalia.

• How does Hanneke feel about Elsbeth? (topic sentence)
• How do Hanneke and Mirjam react to their best friends’ seeming betrayals? Analyze the moments when Hanneke and Mirjam discuss their best friends’ betrayals.
• In your conclusion, show how Mirjam’s description of Amalia changes Hanneke’s perspective on her own relationship with Elsbeth in terms of the book’s theme of The Conflict of Love and Friendship.

2. Discuss the importance of letters and writing in this book, particularly between Bas and Hanneke.

• How does Bas’s (unread) letter affect Hanneke? Consider how Bas’s character is established early in the novel with things left unsaid: (topic sentence)
• How does Bas’s real letter to Ollie compare with Hanneke’s expectations? Perform a textual analysis on Bas’s letter to Ollie.
• In your conclusion, reflect upon how Hanneke uses Bas’s note in her book to come to an acceptance of his death, relating it back to Ellie’s overall character development and her Transformation During Wartime.

3. Hanneke pretends to be many different people to survive in occupied Amsterdam—a flirtatious girl, Ollie’s girlfriend, her parents’ dutiful daughter.

• How does Hanneke keep track of her “true” identity among these disguises? (topic sentence)
• How does her experience relate to and differ from Ollie’s? Discuss the way Hanneke and Ollie must hide their “true” identities, using at least three examples from the text.
• In your conclusion, explain how the characters’ hidden identities relate to the book’s overarching theme of The Difficulty of Interpretation.

Full Essay Assignments

Student Prompt: Write a structured and well-developed essay. Include a thesis statement, at least three main points supported by text details, and a conclusion.

1. Hanneke pretends to be many different people to survive in occupied Amsterdam—including a flirtatious girl, Ollie’s girlfriend, and her parents’ dutiful daughter. How does she keep track of her “true” identity among these many adopted identities? Trace the evolution of Hanneke's false identities in relation to her "true" identity as the novel progresses, citing at least three examples of Hanneke's false identities in the text. How does Hanneke’s experience relate to and differ from Ollie’s? In your analysis, state whether you think that Hanneke's and Ollie's ways of pretending to be different people makes them morally corrupt and explain why.

2. How do definitions of family change during the war? Why is Mrs. Janssen so intent on finding Mirjam, for example? You might also consider Elsbeth’s home with her new husband.

3. Explain the significance of the book’s title. Where does the coat appear in the book? How does it take on significance? Who is the girl in the blue coat?