Imagination vs. Reality Theme Analysis

Stephen and Keith wholly make up the idea that Keith’s mother is a German spy, completely convincing themselves by misconstruing everything they observe about Keith’s mother as proof of her secret espionage. With comical absurdity, the boys see all of Keith’s mother’s behaviors as indications of her supposed secret, which suggests the vitality of imagination as the driving force for Frayn’s novel and reveals the tenuous line that separates imagination from reality. As Stephen aptly states about Keith’s initiation of a project: “He told the story, and the story came to life. Never before, though, has it become real, really real, in the way that it has this time.”

To sort out what is real and what is made up is difficult in Spies. Because the story is told through the eyes of young Stephen, who is faithfully convinced of Keith’s mother’s secret spy operations, the reader is easily sucked into seeing the events pan out in the way the boys believe is happening. Frayn juggles with the concepts of imagination and reality, and invites the reader to contemplate the fictionality of reality and the realistic-ness of fiction. Although the boys’ spy missions are ridiculous, their wild imaginations are not completely uncalled for, because through their persistent spying, Stephen discovers that Keith’s mother is actually hiding something—she is secretly hiding and taking care of Uncle Peter—which explains her suspicious behavior that the boys had originally believed to betray her German spy work. In fact, the plot detail of Keith’s mother’s actual affair with Uncle Peter just plays into Frayn’s invitation to consider the difference between reality and imagination and further blurs that line between the two, as the novel establishes that something very real about Keith’s mother inspired the boys’ imaginative intuitions.

In addition to Frayn playfully depicting the innocent creativity of Stephen and Keith’s imaginations, he also illustrates how dangerous imagination can be if it is taken too seriously—since it ultimately ends with the death of Uncle Peter. From the moment Stephen accepts Keith’s claim that his mother is a German spy, everything that he observes must explain that proposition. He states: “In fact, as I get used to the idea in the days that follow, it begins to make sense of a lot of things.” Stephen believes that Keith’s mother’s secret occupation explains why she sends so many letters in the post, why Miss Durrant’s house happened to be bombed by the Germans, and even why Keith’s mother was so nice to him in the first place. All the while, Stephen never gives a thought to any other possible explanations that may explain the previous observations. The “x” marks that Stephen and Keith find in Keith’s mother’s diary serve as a perfect example of the stubborn breadth of imagination. Although the tiny “x’s” most likely represent Keith’s mother’s menstrual cycles, the boys assume that they stand for her secret meetings that meaningfully coincide with the new moon, and, as the story progresses, “x” accumulates additional meanings—as a kiss, a mathematical variable, and the name of the German that Keith’s mother is hiding. Therefore, Frayn argues that imagination is a generative force of meaning that can spiral out of control.

Although the story depends on the two boys’ wild imaginations, Spies is constructed, as Michael Frayn himself said, like an autobiography. In fact, many of the story’s details about the war were inspired by Frayn’s own memories during his childhood. Thus, the novel is constructed upon the basis of reality but brought to life by the inventive creativity of the author. The story follows the narration of the older Stephen, recalling the memories of his childhood, yet it is still striking how real the memories of a fictional character seem, despite being the product of Frayn’s own imagination (which itself brings to life the imaginations of Stephen and Keith). In fact, many readers of Frayn’s novel have commented on how Stephen’s memories, especially his description of the Close, resemble their own experiences in London during the Second World War. Therefore the way in which Frayn brings to life his own literary creation, Stephen, speaks to the power of literature and its ability to represent the real world. It just takes a bit of imagination—in much the same way that Stephen and Keith imagine Keith’s mother as a German spy—to create a realistic story.

Tellingly, Frayn’s Spies is classified as realist fiction. Realism represents a literary movement that began in the mid-1800s to the early 1900s, during which authors artistically attempted to represent reality. This realist novel about imagination thus demonstrates its potency since it has seduced so many of its readers into suspending disbelief that these are real war memories. The book’s very existence essentially grapples with the plausibility of Stephen and Keith inventing the story of Keith’s mother being a spy.

Finally, Stephen is also self-reflective about the literary nature of his own narration and of his past itself. He is grateful to be involved with the Haywards’ family, who “have taken on the heroic proportions of characters in a legend,” and he thanks the people around him who “wrote or performed the drama of life in which I had a small, often frightening, but always absorbing part.” In effect, Frayn illustrates the literariness of life itself, which is “written” by the people who are part of it, and explores the vast potential of imagination not only as the creative source for literature, but also the drive for life itself.