Chapter 2: Table of contents

1) The changes in the Close: Description of the houses and the neighbours in the past

2) Description of Stephen's house

3) Description of young Stephen

4) Chollerton

5) Description of Keith 

6) Stephen and Keith's relationship

7) Chores, activities and games: What Keith and Stephen used to do when they were together.

8) Description of Mrs. Hayward

9) Description of Mr. Hayward

10) Description of Auntie Dee, little Millie and Uncle Peter

11) Stephen's family

12) The Teas at the Haywards´

13) The source of the perfume: the privets- Braemar

14) The beginning of the story- Problems with memory

15) The six words.

Uncle Peter

Uncle Peter was Auntie Dee's husband, and as it happens with all the other members of Keith´s family, Stephen describes him in a way that shows admiration and idealization.

Uncle Peter is an absent character in the story because he was away in the war. He was a bomber pilot in the RAF. The narrator shows the admiration the young Stephen felt for him by saying : "No one had an absent relative who could compare with Uncle Peter” The fact he was a bomber pilot flying over Germany made him a hero in Stephen´s eyes. He was more prestigious than other neighbours who were also fighting (Mr. Berrill or the McAffees´son) probably because he was bombarding the Germans and in this way, taking revenge for the Blitz.

Paradoxically, even though Uncle Peter was away, his existence could yet be strongly felt inside Auntie Dee's house. (“His very absence was a kind of presence.”) There was a portrait of him  in his RAF officer's cap, in a silver frame on the mantelpiece. Around it were some trophies he had won at sports and some of his belongings.  The mantelpiece resembled a kind of altar, and the words selected to introduce him  and his wife suggest that for Stephen, they shared the sacredness of religious figures:“Auntie Dee and even the untidiness itself glowed with a sacred light like a saint and his attributes in a religious painting, because they reflected the glory of Uncle Peter”. As this quotation suggests, Uncle Peter´s presence could be felt not only on the mantelpiece of the house, but also in the untidiness and neglect of the house (because of the absence of a male figure to tend it), and in his wife, who “reflected” his glory.

The fact that Auntie Dee was bringing up Little Milly on her own with what Stephen describes as “cheerfulness” is for Stephen a consequence of the pride she felt for having such a venerable husband. The narrator expresses this idea with a pun:  “You felt his cheerful bravery in Auntie Dee´s own brave cheerfulness” This quotation shows the way in which Stephen idealised  both Uncle Peter´s attitude towards his role in the war, and Auntie Dee´s mood, and saw them as mirror images of their conjunct effort to contribute with the war.

Last but not least, Uncle Peter´s presence, and his wife´s love and pride for him, could also be felt in the brooch of the RAF Auntie Dee used to wear. The narrator uses another word with religious connotations to express this idea:”manifest” ”He was manifest in the little brooch that Auntie Dee had always pinned to her breast, that showed the three famous initials on a blue enamel background, with the famous wings outspread among them, and the famous crown above.” Here, the repetition of the word “famous” emphasises the prestige of Uncle Peter´s position, and the admiration Stephen felt for him.

In conclusion, Auntie Dee and Uncle Peter , as part of Keith´s family, are described in an extremely positive way. This shows how much the young Stephen idealised them.

Stephen´s and Keith´s fathers in chapter 2

Stephen, the narrator of the story, looks up to  his friend Keith and his family, and considers that they are clearly superior to himself and his own family in all aspects. This is clearly seen in the way in he contrasts his father to Keith´s.

On the one hand, Stephen's father seems to be a very inconspicuous man. His presence at home, as Stephen says, “(…) was scarcely noticeable”. His activities were not particularly interesting or attractive : ”He’d sit for hours at the dining room table, with his paper and files spread out in front of him and a pair of glasses on the end of his nose, or else collapse into one of the scuffed armchairs in the lounge and silently doze through obscure concerts on the wireless that nobody else wanted to hear.” When he wasn’t at home he  :”(…) was out at an office somewhere all day and often evening doing a job too dull to describe” In this quotation, we can see that Stephen didn’t think much of his father´s  job even though he didn't know exactly what it consisted in.

Even the description of his father´s appearance shows Stephen´s negative view of him, as it focuses on the strange looks that the inadequate distribution of hair in his body creates:  “(…) quantities of disorganized dark hair on his chest would come sprouting out of the open neck of his shirt. Then his head would sink and present the world with yet more disorganized hair, dotted in irregular tufts about the infertile landscape of his scalp. Even the back of his hands had coarse dark hair on them –even the gaps between his cuffs and his crumpled socks.” The narrator concludes that his appearance was “as unsatisfactory as Stephen`s”

Stephen´s father´s inadequacy is also highlighted by his peculiar vocabulary. Stephen confesses there was “something embarrassingly private about this”. He used words like “coodle-moodle” ( meaning “messy”) and “shnick-shnack” (meaning “nonsense”) Stephen once tried one of these words with Keith, but he realised from the disconcerted look on his friend's face that “he´d said the wrong thing”

On the other hand, Keith’s father didn´t spend the day working in some unseen office, like Stephen’s, and his job wasn't dull at all.  On the contrary, what he did was exciting and prestigious:  he was part of the Home Guard  and he had participated in the Great War. He had even won a medal for killing five Germans with a bayonet, and, according to Keith, he worked for the Secret Service.

When he was at home, his presence was noticeable, by his incessant whistling and by his constant work around the house “making perfection yet more perfect.” Stephen shows his admiration for Mr Hayward´s work in the house in the  description of the garage where he worked and kept his tools. The narrator defines this place as “the headquarters of Keith’s father´s operations”. The word “headquarters” suggests the importance Stephen assigns to this place. He also speaks of “the wonderful private kingdom inside”, and describes the care Mr Hayward put in each task he undertook, the enormous variety of tools he had, and the impressive order in which he kept them.

Mr Hayward was a man of few words, but when he spoke, he didn´t use embarrassing terms that nobody understood. On the contrary, he used fashionable forms of address: “old bean” or “old chap”, and he ascertained his paternal authority with the menace of caning. He never spoke to Stephen, only to his son, and Stephen seemed to feel so uncomfortable in the presence of such a respectable man, that he didn`t even dare look directly at him.

In conclusion Keith´s and Stephen´s fathers were completely different in all aspects. Even though Stephen seems to fear Mr Hayward, he is also very impressed by him, and, at this point of the story, he presents him as the prototype of a father.

Auntie Dee

Auntie Dee was Keith's mother´s sister. She was formally known as Mrs. Tracey. Only Keith's family called her Auntie Dee .She was married to Uncle Peter, who was away because of the war. They had a daughter called Milly.  Her house was very untidy, most probably because of the absence of Uncle Peter: "The grass on the untended lawn was as high as the rusting croquet hoops left over from earlier summers". Even though Keith disapproved of the neglect of her house, Stephen considered it had an almost sacred quality as it  “reflected the glory of Uncle Peter”

Her family lived three houses down Keith's so Mrs Hayward would often sent his son with food for Auntie Dee. Although Keith's mother and Auntie Dee were sisters, they were different both in appearance and personality: "Keith's mother was tall, Auntie Dee was short. Keith's mother was unhurried and calmly smiling; Auntie Dee was always in a rush and smiling, not calmly at all but with a reckless display of white teeth and cheerfulness"

Stephen seemed to like Auntie Dee for many reasons. First of all,  Auntie Dee addressed Stephen as well as Keith: "She'd speak, not just to Keith, but quite directly to both of us, as if I existed as much as Keith did"  Secondly, she was Uncle Peter´s wife, and Stephen clearly admired him. Last but not least, she was his friend´s aunt, and anything that belonged to Keith was admirable for Stephen, specially because it was different from what he had: “ “Would even Uncle Peter have been quite such a perfect uncle if Stephen himself hadn´t had to make do with a handful of obscure aunts in flowered dresses?”

Picture of Stephen

Click here to see Victoria Milin´s picture of Stephen

Tags by: Miguel Garcia Haiyashi

Memory and reliability

We have already seen how the narrator's point of view can affect reliability in any type of narration, but memory also plays an important part in its reliability, just as much or even more than vantage point. Depending on how well the narrator remembers what happened, the atmosphere and the message transmitted to the reader changes significantly.

In the case of 'Spies', there's a particular event in the story which changes its course significantly, and while Stephen tells it he tries to recall the order in which things happened. Even though he ends up making clear what the conclusion of all the incident was ( Keith's uttering the six words: “My mother is a German spy”), he doesn't really make up his mind on when, or how it was that this happened. He remains doubtful about the day in which everything occurred, stating "When is this?... Still May, perhaps? Why aren't we at school? Perhaps it's a Saturday or a Sunday. No, there's the feel of a weekday morning in the air...". This doubt in his thoughts makes the reader suspect of just how reliable what Stephen is telling actually is. He does remember what happened, but he can't seem to put the pieces together chronologically, so he is not completely sure of what order things occurred in, as he well expresses "...Or have I got everything back to front? Had the policemen already happened before this?". He even questions the possibility of making up a story : "It's so difficult to remember what order things occurred in--but if you can't remember that, then it's impossible to work out which led to which, and what the connection was".

This, as a whole, shows how the memory of a narrator when explaining a particular event can sometimes make the reader distrust his reliability. In Stephen's case, he makes us suspect something in his way of narrating  Keith's confession is wrong, because he seems to have forgotten the date and the chronological order the facts have happened in.

Stephen's and Keith's bedrooms

The story is narrated by Stephen, who is always comparing  Keith with himself. One of the comparisons he makes in chapter 2 focuses on their rooms, and shows a lot about their characters.

As it happens with the rest of the house,  Stephen´s description of Keith´s playroom focuses on its luxury and perfection. Keith´s playroom is neat, organized and impeccable. Besides, as he is an only child, he has  his toys all for himself: "All Keith's toys are his own, neatly ranged in drawers and cupboards, often in the boxes they came in" There is a great variety of expensive and elaborated toys and  all of them are in working conditions. Stephen´s admiration is clear all along the description.

In contrast,  Stephen doesn´t have a playroom. He has to play in his bedroom, which he shares with his brother Geoff. Therefore his space is smaller than Keith´s. His toys are all broken, and his toy cupboard is a mess. Besides, the room seems untidy, disorganised and neglected. All over the place there is "a hopeless tangle of string and plasticine and electric cord and forgotten socks and dust, of old cardboard boxes of mouldering butterflies and broken birds´eggs left over from abandoned projects in the past". The description is very negative and shows how disagreeable and shameful his room is for him in comparison to Keith´s.

In conclusion, these two rooms reflect the personality and family background of each character. Keith is methodical and structured, probably because of the influence of his father. His toys show the comfortable economic position of his family as well. Instead, Stephen´s possessions are damaged and dirty. His room is messy, and proves that neatness and looks are not his family's main concern. Besides, Stephen´s low self-esteem makes him look up on Keith and his family, whom he considers superior in all aspects, and the view he has of his friend's room is no exception to this. In Stephen´s opinion, Keith´s room is admirable, while his own is just humiliating.

Is the narrator reliable?

Even though we haven't got enough information yet to answer this question fully, we've noticed a few clues and hints in chapter 2 that point towards a conclusion. The whole story is told from Stephen's point of view, so we can agree from the very beginning that it's told in first person. This alone already tells us a little bit about the narrator's reliability. No story narrated in the first person can be completely objective, and so  there will always be something that is based on the narrator's point of view. And this of course happens with Stephen: he is constantly giving his opinion on what's going on in the story, often comparing his perspective as a kid and his perspective as a grown up.

There are many ways in which the story makes us doubt about the narrator's reliability. One of them are the sweeping generalisations Stephen makes when  he introduces Keith Hayward in chapter 2. One of the generalisations we've found so far is that he describes Keith as being absolutely perfect, whereas he considers himself  the worst of the worst when compared to his friend.  Even though it may seem Keith is in a much better economic situation than Stephen, it is obvious that he can't be superior to Stephen in all aspects. However, Stephen makes it look as if he were superior to him from all points of view. He talks about Keith's life as if everything is perfect. For example, Stephen refers to the colours of Keith´s school as an epitome of excellence:  "Yellow and black are the colors of the right local preparatory school..." but he talks about the colours of his own school as if they were some sort of disgrace compared to Keith's: "Green and black are the colors of the wrong school..." To us, he is emphasizing the words 'right' and 'wrong' as he uses them again to make the following  controversial deductions and sweeping generalizations: “Cycling is plainly the right way to go to school; the bus which Stephen catches each day at the cracked concrete bus stop on the main road is plainly the wrong way. Green is the right colour for a bicycle as it's the wrong one for a belt or a bus” "...everything about him was yellow and black; everything about me was plainly green and black." This shows he thinks everything (not just social class) in Keith's life is great and everything in his life is miserable. Besides, not matter what Keith does, it is always correct but whatever Stephen does is always incorrect. This is evidently  his point of view. This is just what he thinks, and we doubt if these ideas are not just an indicator of an inferiority complex.

He also uses extremely hyperbolic descriptions to talk about the Haywards. As these descriptions are highly exaggerated, we can't say that they are 100% reliable. From Stephen´s perspective, “the Haywards were impeccable”. Everything related to them is perfect. The text is full of positive adjectives describing how neat and special their home and all their possessions are.  Keith´s playroom is an example of a tidiness and a carefulness which is rarely found in children his age: "All of Keith's toys are his own, neatly ranged in drawers and cupboards, often in the same boxes they came in." Even their chicken coop is described in that way: “Even the chickens at the bottom of their garden lived irreproachably elegant lives”.All his descriptions of the Haywards  are clearly hyperbolic, but it is only because that is the way he sees them.. And, once more, this subjectivity takes away from the credibility of the narrator.

Finally, one of the reasons we doubt about whether the narrator is reliable or not, is Stephen's sense of inferiority. He is so certain of his unworthiness that he cannot explain the fact that the Haywards allowed him to play with their only son: “ What puzzles me now as I look back on it is that Keith´s parents had ever allowed their son to build underground tunnels and overhead cable cars to Stephen´s house, (...) to invite him to play (…)“” I was acutely aware, even then, of my incomprehensible good fortune in being Keith´s friend.” Moreover, the narrator has always seemed to feel inferior to others he has  had a close relation with, no matter who they are. When he talks about Keith he makes it clear that, for some reason, he has always seemed to be the dominated individual in a relationship: "I see now that he was only the first in a whole series of dominant figures in my life whose disciple I became." This is important because the fact that he feels inferior to others means that he is used to admiring and looking up to everyone else, thus he is not giving an objective point of view. As he's always worshiping the person he is relating with, his opinions stem from this admiration.

In conclusion, these clues and hints given so far in the story make us doubt about the reliability of the narrator. Up to this point, we have agreed on saying that the narrator (Stephen) is unreliable due to all these reasons: his constant sweeping generalisations, his hyperbolic descriptions when talking about Keith and his family and his own sense of inferiority.

References to World War Two in chapter 2

We learn that the events from the narrator's childhood described in chapter 2 took place in the times of  World War II because there are many references to it.

First of all, there are many references to the feared enemies: the Germans, and to the Blitz, i.e. the German bombardment of the United Kingdom. Mr Haywards has taken out the wheels of his car “to prevent its being commandeered, as Keith explained, by invading Germans.” (Picador, page 23), and he is planning to use his revolver “to give any invading German a nasty surprise.”(page 23)  Once the two boys saw “a crashed German plane with the pilot sitting dead in the cockpit” (page 21), and there is “an air-raid shelter” in Keith´s garden. Clearly these last quotations refer to German attacks on England, and to one of the ways in which people took refuge from them. (In class, we also mentioned how, in London, people used the railway stations as shelters)

 

There are also some references to the way in which the war affected citizens´ every day lives: many of the men in the street are “away in the Services”, Mr Hayward can´t use his car because of  the shortage of petrol brought about by the war, and  Stephen mentions that leisure has been suspended for the “Duration”. Stephen capitalises this word to show how in his childhood there was so much talk about the duration of the war, that he thought it was a fixed phrase.

There is a reference to the “Jews” as well, who live in Trewinnick, the “mysterious house where the blackout are always drawn.” We wonder if the poor Jewish people living there are so terrified by the Holocaust that they don't dare open their windows but Keith and Stephen  took them for a sinister organization, and they called them the “Juice”.

Last but not least, the war is even present in the metaphoric language used to describe Stephen and Keith´s relationship: they are a “two-man army”. Keith is an “officer corps”, and Stephen is the “other ranks”.

In conclusion, the historical context pervades the descriptions of the characters and the houses in the Close in chapter 2, and makes us feel that War World 2 is in the air.

How is Stephen Wheatley introduced? (Essay writing)

Tips to write a good text-based essay

A text-based question  is different from other kinds of questions in the exam, because it always refers to just one passage of the novel, which should be analysed in detail. In other questions, you may be asked about an aspect of the whole book, and you may need to refer to different passages, but in a text-based question you need to focus just on the given extract.

1)  Read the question carefully and make sure you understand all aspects of it. (Remember you can´t answer just one part of it and leave the rest aside)

Example:Text-based question

 In this question,  you have to 1) describe
                                                2) explore

To describe, you may say that grey is the colour that seems to characterise Stephen. But you also need to "explore" this information, so that means that, for example, you will have to consider the connotations of this colour.

Besides the word "how" in this question suggests that you will need to say something about the way in which language is used in this description.

2) Read the passage and start thinking of the question. Mark everything that may help you answer it.

3) Start planning what you´ll say and how you will organise your ideas.

4) Try to think of a good thesis statement that may help you organise your thoughts. The thesis statement is the sentence that summarises the main point of your essay.  For this passage, we thought of three possible thesis statements:

a) When the old narrator introduces the young Stephen, he tries to detach himself from his childhood version as much as possible, because he doesn't seem to recognize himself in the boy
b) The narrator uses sensory images to introduce the young Stephen to make him come alive from the recesses of his memory.
c) The narrator introduces the young Stephen in relation to his surroundings (home and neighbours) to show how different he is from the other children in the Close.

You have to include the thesis statement in the introduction, and let it govern your whole essay. Everything you say needs to develop and prove your thesis statement.

Here you can read two essays that use the first thesis statement (a):
Martina´s essay
Mia´s essay
(These essays were written by two Senior IV students, who are re-reading the book this year.)

Stephen´s and Keith´s houses in chapter 2

Click here to see a chart comparing Stephen´s and Keith´s houses.

Sensory images and memory

At the beginning of the book, we can find that the narrator uses many sense-related images to describe his memories. One of them , for example, is when Stephen tries to describe a peculiar smell whose origin he could not determine ("It's something quite harsh and coarse. It reeks."). Other examples would be when he makes an effort to recreate the texture of the scaly belt he wore as a child ("In the tip of my fingers, though, even now, I can feel the delicious silvery serrated texture of the snake's scaliness.") or the failed garter of his sock (“I can feel it in my fingertips, as clearly as the scaliness of the snake, the hopeless bagginess of the failed garter beneath the turned-down top), or when the sound of a train makes the past rematerialise, and turns the present Close into his childhood street.

The use of these sensory images was proved to be a good method to remember things in a TV show called "Brain Games". In an episode of this show, the host asked a group of people to memorize a certain amount of items in a room. In their first try they could only remember around 3 or 4 items out of 10, but in their second try, the host told them to think of a sensory aspect of each item to see if  their score improved. To their surprise, it worked. This time they could recall around 6 or 7 of the 10 items.

The studies and experiments made in "Brain Games" show why Stephen focuses on sensory elements to retrieve his childhood memories.  As shown in this TV show, using the senses helps us remember.

"Everything is as it was (...) and everything has changed" (Chapter 2)

The chapter opens with a paradox: "Everything is at it was, I discover when I reach my destination, and everything has changed".  This paradox invites us to wonder what has remained the same and what is different: the appearance of the place, the narrator´s feelings, the people, the atmosphere? In the following paragraphs, the narrator gives us many clues as to how to understand this initial paradox.

On the one hand, the similarities the old narrator notices between the Close of his childhood and the street he has in front of him are the ordinariness of the place and the number of houses. The same 14 houses stand in exactly the same place where they stood 60 years before and the street still looks as ordinary and unremarkable as it used to.

On the other hand, there have been many changes. The houses don´t look the same. Their appearance has changed and they have less vegetation around them. The trees have grown: “The stringy prunus saplings” that where along the verges of the avenue “are now wise and dignified trees”. The main road has now less traffic and the shop names have changed. Even the sky has changed from one full of war, falling flares and searchlights at night to one that was “mild and bland”.

In conclusion, we can say that even though the town has physically changed, the narrator finds it still familiar. In spite of the changes, he is still able to recognise the houses and the dull atmosphere that pervades the place.