The Haywards: Appearance and Reality

               At the beginning of the story, as described in previous posts, Stephen idealises the Haywards. In his distorted view, the Haywards are the perfect family and Stephen wishes his own family were like them. Little by little, we realise how unreliable Stephen's point of  view is and we start perceiving the conflicts and the dark truth behind the Haywards´ immaculate white walls. Stephen also realises his initial conception of Keith´s family was inadequate, but his understanding of their problems is still not complete. We- readers-. are sometimes a step ahead him in interpreting the clues provided by his close observation of this family. A good example of this difference is provided by  chapters 8 and 9.

Stephen´s family´s opinion and the narrator´s reliability

While reading further and further through chapter 4, we can clearly see how many of the characters in the story underestimate and even mock Stephen and Keith's activity of spying, each character in its own way.

In Stephen's own family, both his mother and his brother Geoff disapprove the fact that Stephen gets together with Keith as often as he does. His mother probably doesn't like this because she sees Keith as some sort of bad influence for Stephen, and this is why she doesn't allow him to go to Keith's house most of the time, as she expresses by saying "Fidget, fidget! What's got into you?" as well as "Now where are you off to? You're not going to Keith's house again tonight, let me tell you that right now". By saying this, the reader is able to realize that what she probably wants is for her son to do other activities rather than getting together with Keith. She even looks for excuses to make him stay: "Anyway, tonight you can just stay in for once. It is Friday after all" and "Also Daddy's home–he never sees you!".

When it comes to Geoff, he doesn't disapprove as strictly and strongly as his mother, but he does it in such a silly way that it's as if he were mocking Stephen and Keith's activities. First, he asks if they're going "after the ape-man on the golf course," and then he hurtfully ridicules Stephen: "I've seen you, chum! Hanging around Mr. Gort's house, looking for ape-men! It's hell's own pathetic, you know, at your age". This demonstrates that he considers their projects to be a waste of time.

Stephen's familys opinion reinforces our belief at this point of the text that Stephen and Keith's activities are no more than a childish game.  We assume Stephen's narration is hyperbolic, as he exaggerates the importance of what they do as if they were going to somehow save tyheir country with their investigation. It just gives us more proof (this time from characters in the story) that their projects might seem great to them but to us (and this time even to Stephen's family) they are just part of an unimportant and insignificant game they've made up in their minds.

As a conclusion, the only thing the whole family's disbelief does is add to the narrator's unreliability. If we already doubted his reliability, both Stephen's mother and Geoff's opinion are going to reinforce our doubts, because they express some of the same disbelief we already had. Like them, we discredit the children's investigation and at this point of the novel we feel really skeptical about their chances of finding anything important.

Barbara Berrill

Barbara Berrill lives at number 6. She has a round face with big brown eyes and a big mocking smile. Her hair is curled and it falls onto her cheeks. She is a year older than Keith and Stephen.

She doesn't go to the same school as the boys, so she wears  blue and white summer checks,  puffy summer sleeves and  white summer socks. She has a purse slung around her neck in which she takes her bus and milk money.

She has an elder sister, Deirdre, who "hangs out" with Geoff, Stephen´s eldest brother. The Berrill girls´ father is away in the army and most people in the Close say that they are running wild.

Stephen and Keith despise Barbara because she is a girl, and they are not interested in the opposite sex yet. They don't even understand female behaviour: “ Why are girls like this?” Stephen says she is below their notice and thinks that everything about Barbara is soft and "girlish". For them, she is sly, treacherous and dislikable.  To make matters worse, Barbara tries to intrude into their private male kingdom. Barbara begs the boys to tell her about their new mission because she wants to join them, but they refuse to let her in. So she starts to shout that they are spying on people, which the boys find most humiliating.

Barbara´s reaction to the boys´  adventure is surprising and interesting. She wants to know what they are doing, even though she thinks it is a stupid little boys´ game. She uses the words “playing” and “game” to refer to the boys´adventure, and she suggests their lookout is just a “camp”. Besides, she links this new enterprise with their worthless past investigations: “´Who is it?´ She demands. ´Not Mr Gort still?´”

Barbara´s comments make us -readers- doubt that the children´s new project is serious. They even shatter Stephen and Keith´s convictions: “I know now that the whole thing- the disappearances, the secret marks in the diary, everything- was just one of our pretend games. Even Keith knows it.” At this point, both the narrator and ourselves align with Barbara Berrill, and  we dismiss the whole adventure as just a flight of childish imagination. Girls are generally considered to be more mature than boys, so we believe Barbara is right: This can't be more than a silly game. But...Is it?

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.

Information about the narrator in chapter 1

This is the information that we get in chapter 1 about the narrator:

• He is an old man.
•  He is around 70 years old. At some point he says: “ On a summer day nearly 60 years ago(…)”, so if he was a boy when the events took place, he must be in his 70s.
• He has 2 children  and 2 grandchildren.

• He is trying to remember something about his past related to an unsolved mystery, but strong feelings seem to be blocking his mind.
• He is a professional translator.
• He is not living in the same place where he spent his childhood.