Our Attitutude Towards Keith and Stephen´s projects in chapter 3.

In the book, Stephen and Keith seem to have discovered a very dark secret: Mrs. Hayward is a German spy. Throughout chapter 3, we read how the two imaginative kids spy on Keith's mother. At many points in this chapter, we, readers, doubt about the seriousness of the children´s investigation. We can not share their beliefs because we are aware that they don´t fully understand how the world works, and so we start having a cynical and distrustful attitude towards their projects.

To begin with, everything that they are spying on are ordinary events that they previously took for granted (Mrs Hayward´s excursions to the shops or the post, her conversations with the butcher or the maid, etc) The fact that they suspiciously inspect and doubt every single action or person that are related to Mrs. Hayward  gives us the impression that the whole investigation is just a figment of their vivid imagination. However, Stephen and Keith, believe that there is a real problem going on in the Close and their task is of the utmost importance . This is shown when Stephen thinks "But then what can we do, if she's a German spy? We have to make sacrifices for the War Effort" or when he says "We have to defend our homeland from its enemies". These quotes show that they think that they have a significant role in the war, which we only see as part of their naive perspective.

Keith's ability to invent new mysteries for them to investigate is another reason that accounts for our lack of trust in their ideas. For example, they have already looked into the alleged crimes of Mr Gort. Their discovery of buried bones in his backyard lead them to write a letter  to Mr MacAffee, whom Stephen describes as "a kind of policeman",  Their expectations that Mr MacAffee would arrest Mr Gort was not fulfilled, which proves that the whole investigation was only part of their childish imagination.  This previous experience leads us to think that Keith's mother being a German spy is not any more true than Mr Gort´s murder story.

All this attitude is related to Franco Molina's posts on the reliability of the narrator. In his post he argues that we can not completely rely on the narrator not only because the old Stephen doesn´t remember the order of events clearly but also because he tells many parts of the story from young Stephen´s perspective, i.e. a perspective which is affected by his lack of knowledge and experience and by his inferiority complex.

In conclusion, in this chapter, our attitude towards the kids' activities is one of mistrust. We believe that all their investigation is part of their lack of understanding of the adults´ world and a creation of their childish imagination.