What do you find noteworthy about the narrative voice in Spies?

Harry Elletson L6 HJC

The narrative voice in Spies has many different, stylistic and significant features about it, and changes a lot in the novel. The voice usually uses a lot of descriptive and suspenseful language, which often shapes the events to come. It’s form, as I will discuss in the essay, changes from first person to third person quite regularly and finally, the structure of the novel is born out from the use of the narrative voice. There are four main features in which I take great interest that will be the focus point of my essay. These are the use of dual narrative, the use of the unreliable narrator and the continual use of irony.

The dual narrative is a device used in which it includes both first person and third person, which of course is the form in which the novel takes. The novel begins with the use of first person, ‘I have a feeling that something, somewhere, has been left unresolved’, which clearly here is very basic and very common. The language he uses here is very mysterious and gripping, which continues in this chapter with, ‘If I only I knew’ and ‘perhaps I’m the only who remembers’. In the second chapter, we are introduced to the third person narrative, with the narrator now referring to himself as ‘Stephen Wheatley’, which in my opinion, is a very unique way of constructing his novel. We see further examples, such as ‘there’s something not quite right about him’ and ‘tell him to wake up and stop being so…unsatisfactory’. Here, the narrator is deliberately distancing himself from the younger Stephen perhaps implying that he is no longer that ‘unsatisfactory’ child and that he is not even Stephen Wheatley any more. The use of the dual narrative here is already shaping the structure of the novel as he is implying to the reader that he isn’t Stephen Wheatley, and that what he sees is a completely different person, which of course, he is. He is Stefan Weitzler, the German self of Stephen Wheatley. The dual narrative also has another use, which is also very important in determining the course of the novel. At the end of Chapter 4 it ends with first person, ‘I shiver’ then in the first paragraph of Chapter 5 is says, ‘And Stephen Wheatley has become this old man who seems to be me’. This, in my opinion, is a deliberate method to distant the child and adult Stephen, so the reader can determine both opinions and both accounts of events. This leads me on to the next noteworthy feature.

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The use of the unreliable narrative is in many ways a benefit and in others, I believe to be deliberately frustrating. The narrator introduces this feature very early on in the novel when he mentions, ‘Or half-remembers’ and ‘it’s often hard to remember the exact words’. Here, the narrator is warning the reader of the difficulty of locating memories but also he is structuring the way in which he tells the story. The unreliability appears in Chapter 2, when he mentions, ‘or have I got this back to front?’ The language here is very conversational and opens the conversation up to the reader with the use of rhetorical questions. Also, we realise how honest the narrator is in the novel, which is a very interesting theme about the narrator as he can contradict what he has previously said which allows himself to make new assumptions to play, once again, with the structure of the novel and with the readers understanding of the novel itself. Furthermore, the unreliability also opens up the possibility of irony.

The use of irony by the narrator is possibly the most interesting and noteworthy aspect about Spies. The most important piece of irony lies within the Hayward family and, in particular, Stephen’s view on Uncle Peter. In Chapter 2, page 25, Stephen says, ‘But no one had an absent relative who could compare to Uncle Peter’. This is painfully ironic as this brave RAF pilot, who Stephen has so much admiration for, is merely a cowardly tramp who lives in a hole. His language when he describes Uncle Peter is full of pride and awe, such as ‘glowed’ and ‘glory’, which again is ironic, as Uncle Peter is clearly the opposite. When Stephen discovers that Keith’s mother is a German spy, he says:

A father in the Secret Service and a mother who’s a German spy – when the rest of us can’t muster even one parent of interest!

This, of course, is incredibly ironic as this is not true at all and it is in fact Stephen’s parents who are the ‘parents of interest’. It is Stephen’s dad who was the German spy, Stephen’s dad who is in the Secret Service working for the British intelligence. This use of irony again is constantly determining the structure of the novel and how the reader sees the Haywards. Another crucial irony is that of the spying on Keith’s mother. On page 41, Stephen says, ‘she’s pretending to be part of some innocent children’s game’. Of course, it is a children’s game but in their eyes it is a brave, patriotic, mission and hugely important. The other irony is that it soon turns out to be far more than a ‘children’s game’ and begins to ruin peoples lives and finally ends up in Uncle Peter’s death.

In conclusion, I have discovered many noteworthy features of the narrative voice and there are many more to be discussed. The dual narrative is highly important in giving us a clear view in whom Stephen really is and a detailed account of his childhood life. The unreliability of the narrator allows us to question the account and also gives the readers a chance to form their own opinion. The use of irony, in my opinion, is the most noteworthy feature of the narrative voice in Spies as it shapes and unravels the mysteries behind Stephen Wheatley.

What do you find noteworthy about the narrative voice in Spies?

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