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Spies by Michael Frayn

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Tracking a Text: Spies by Michael Frayn 1: Chapter One: pages 3 – 6 The narrator (Stephen) is disturbed by the smell of a certain shrub every June. It triggers his memory and makes him think of the past. Particularly, he thinks of Keith and Keith’s mother. He remembers Keith’s mother, her eyes sparkling and her laughter. Then he remembers her crying and he not knowing what to do. He remembers that the whole thing started with six words spoken by Keith. He resolves to go back to the place where these events took place and books a flight to London. He doesn’t say where he lives. But it is not far from London and there is a suggestion that his daughter is not speaking English. He tells his daughter and son that he …show more content…

Stephen feels that there is something improper in looking at them ‘stripped of their protective adulthood.’ (p46) She catches them in her room, but they say they are doing nothing. ‘And everything in the world has changed beyond imagination or recall.’ (P51) They plan to follow Mrs Hayward to her rendezvous at the end of the month. Keith hangs an old bath tile in the entrance to their hiding place. Upon it he has written: ‘Privet’. Stephen recognises the spelling mistake but doesn’t say anything. Also, there is irony in the fact that this is the name of the bush whose fragrance torments him. Whose Reality? In Chapter 3 From here, old Stephen is the outer narrator, but the bulk of the narrative is given over to young Stephen. Old Stephen is like an observer of his own past. The past is a separate life and reality from the present. One thing that the ‘stalking’ of Keith’s mother demonstrates is that once you believe someone is a spy, everything they do can seem suspicious. As Stephen say ‘Everything that we’d once taken for granted now seems open to question’. (p41) This creates a dual reality, one if Keith’s mother is a spy and another if she isn’t. It is increasingly obvious that Mrs Hayward is not a German spy. The spies in the novel at this point are Keith and Stephen. 4: Chapter 4: pages 65 – 89 Stephen suffers at school, being bullied at lunchtime. But he is sustained by the fact that he ‘knows’ about Mrs Hayward

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