Some events in the story are written out of order. Name three instances of flashbacks (a place where the author stops the story and describes something from the past). Why did the author do this?

Flashbacks are a literary device that allows the author to include important information to the reader from the past before the story started. It could be information about plot, character, action....Chapter two, for example, opens with a flashback. Corrie tells about her life in the year 1898 as a six-year-old about to start school for the first time. Her sister Betsie chides Corrie for dressing untidily, acting as an authority figure. Partly Betsie acts older, because she has pernicious anemia and cannot participate in normal childhood activities like skating and tag. Amidst the girls’ preparation for school, Nollie refuses to wear the ugly grey hat that Tante Jans bought for her, opting for a more chic little fur hat that the milliner’s wife, Mrs. van Dyver, gave to her. Tante Jans moved in with the family, overtaking the two second-story rooms in the tiny house. She buys most of the clothes for the girls and passes severe judgment on anything she deems immodest or inappropriate fashion. When Tante Jans isn’t writing tracts about Christianity, she tells people that death will come any day now. Corrie reflects that the rest of the family squeezes into the remaining rooms, Tante Bep with the only window, and Tante Anna, Betsie and Willem behind, the two girls in the back attic and their parents below.