Spies Key quotations Flashcards
‘A shower of sparks… A feeling of shame… Someone unseen coughing, trying not to be heard.’ (Page 5)
Foreshadowing future events
‘It has a kind of sexual urgency to it’
Foreshadowing Stephen’s awakening of adolescent
‘Even less desirable than we were’
Stephen’s family is portrayed as undesirable
‘He was the leader and I was the led’
Stephen is a follower who is led by Keith
‘Sometimes she’d commission Keith to say something to Stephen individually on her behalf: Darling, doesn’t Keith have homework to do…?’
Keith's mother never speaks directly to Stephen but instead asks Keith to ask Stephen Mrs Hayward is portrayed as snobbish as she looks down on Stephen as too lower class and inferior to even have the curtesy to speak to Stephen
‘Making perfection yet more perfect’
Mr Hayward is hard working and a perfectionist
To be admired - above undesirable Wheatley’s
‘Even the chickens at the bottom of the garden lived irreproachably elegant lives, parading haughtily about a spacious kingdom’
Everything about the Hayward’s is to be admired even the chickens that live amazing lives
Even the chickens are above the Wheatley’s
‘Old bean’
Keith is mimicking his father through language - sounds patronising
Growing up
‘A tiny x. A strange tingling feeling goes through me. This is something quite different’
Stephen doesn’t understand x at first but does later in the novel as he starts to understand adolescence
Short sentences - shock and trying to understand
‘An odd thought comes into my head: that I’ve found a value for x’
Stephen understands X which is sex – adolescence
He slowly discovers adult life through spying
‘You understand that sometimes people find themselves isolated. They feel that they’re outcasts and everyone’s against them.’
Microcosm of the war
People without members of family – fathers
Understands adolescence
Talks to him directly for once Stephen has become an adult
Symbolism and a moral message - allegory - the relationship between Stephen and Mrs Hayward
‘The awkward boy who lives in that unkempt house’
Lower class Opposite of perfection - antithesis
