How Does Michael Frayn Present Stephen

How does Michael Frayn present Stephen’s journey from innocence to experience in Chapters 1-5 of Spies? Spies is a bildungsroman where the protagonist, Stephen discusses about the events from his childhood which then effect on him in his adult life. You are led through the journey of Stephen as us as the reader sees only from young or old Stephen. Michael Frayn presents Stephen as naive and easily influenced in the beginning of the novel. In Spies, Stephen gets the wrong impression about Mrs Hayward’s diary’s x’s and exclamation marks and mistakes it for some form of German “code”. This then leads him to believe that “she actually is a German spy”. This signifies Stephen’s naivety and how he is now accepting it to be true. The word “actually” is effective in this sentence as it was used to emphasize that something someone has done is surprising which in this case, is Stephen being surprised about Mrs Hayward’s being a German spy. The fact that the word “actually” is put at the beginning could propose that it is “actually” surprising and unexpected. By him saying “she ‘actually’ is a German spy” also gives emphasis to the fact that he now believes that it is true as he did not before. In the novel, Michael Frayn also presents Stephen’s naivety about adults. The protagonist discusses how “There’s only one way to go when you get to the end of the Close, and that’s left… if you go right the road peters out into a rough track that disappears through the undergrowth into a dark, disused tunnel.” Michael Frayn makes use of the tunnel as a metaphor. This is for the reason that it is the journey that Keith’s mother goes through and it is her decision. It does not even come to Stephen’s mind that Mrs. Hayward could just be choosing the path that is dangerous because it could be a shorter route to where she is heading. This is because to him, he would assume that adults are sensible and would then choose the logical path.