Zusammenfassung der Ressource
SPIES (Stephen and Keith)
- Stephen
- "doesn't quite fit in with the pigtailed Geest girls and
the oil-stained Avery boys, and never will"
- Stephen values Keith due
to his possessions
- Stresses the importance of
possessions and appearance
- Stephen describes the contents of Keith's house
as opposed to the owners of the house (chapter 2)
- "He doesn't need to open the front gate because it's open already, rotted drunkenly away from the top hinge"
- Appearance
- "Green and black are the
colours of the wrong school"
- "He pulls up the sagging sock, and bends
down to tie the untied tennis shoe"
- "socially colour coded for ease of reference"
- "the one with the stick-out ears and the too-short grey flannel
school shirt hanging out of the too-long grey flannel school shorts"
- Descriptions
- "just plain Stephen"
- "unsatisfactory"
- "weeny Weedy Wheatly"
- Barbara realises that
Stephen is easily led and
undermines him
- Narrator
- Do we trust him?
- Patchy (selective) memory
- Not very reliable
- Does
he push
himself
against
his
social
class?
- Does this affect him as an adult?
- Rebellious
- Does S idolise K?
- Can he see K's
flaws?
- At the end of the book, Stephen feels that Keith has changed. It is at this point when the relationship between the two boys ends.
- 'His eyes look into mine. They're the eyes of a stranger.'
- Stephen is inferior to Keith
- "the rest of us can't even muster
even one parent of interest"
- "or rather Stephen's waiting
for Keith to decide"
- He is aware of his inferiority
- "he was the leader and I was the led"
- "he was only the first in a whole series of dominant
figures in my life whose disciple I became"
- "Keith's in front, of course"
- "he's still leader of this expedition"
- "Keith can overtake me and resume full control of the operation"
- Stephen is actively being submissive
- Keith
- "A father in the secret service and a
mother who's a German spy"
- "the white wicket gate on its well oiled hinges"
- Appearance
- "Yellow and black are
the colours of the right
preparatory school"
- "his brown leather sandals
are neatly buckled"
- "His grey socks are
neatly pulled up"
- "His shirt, though, is not too short, his shorts are not too long."
- Towards the end of the novel, Keith
starts to become like his father
- His father is obviously a dominant figure in his life
- He begins to look down on Stephen
- Acts in a way that is condescending and prejudiced
- Who is more
intelligent? S or K?
- Despite better education ("the right
preparatory school"), K cant spell private
- Ironic
- Childhood
- The children often misinterpret the world around them
- "The Juice" = Jews
- Don't judge too early: the Juice isn't sinister
- 'x' in the diary is Keith's mother's period
- Narrator describes
childhood in different tenses
- Stefan still seems to have a child's perspective
- Perhaps he is just trying to be a child again
- He grew up too quickly
- Went through adolescent awakening
- Smokes for the fist time
- Experiences sexual feelings towards Barbara
- Frayn uses the innocence and naïvety of Stephen and Keith to introduce certain ideas
- Ideas such as the notion that Keith's mum is a German spy
- Spying
- Stephen and Keith obsessed with the idea that K's mother is a spy
- Spend the majority of their time trying to prove it
- Stephen tells Keith that his father is also a spy
- Says this either as a joke or to compete with him
- S's father speaks a foreign
language and turns out to actually
be a German spy in the end
- In a way, Stephen, Keith and Barbara become spies themselves
- They previously spied on Mr Gort
- "That single x haunts
my dreams"