Explore the ways Frayn portrays the unreliability of memory in his novel ‘Spies’. The story Michael Frayn’s novel ‘Spies’ brings is based on the unsolicited memory of Stefan Weitzler, who is the narrator of the book. He recalls and reconstructs a story which happened in a summer half a century ago. The narrator emphasizes his difficulty in recalling the content many times as it goes on, and keeps questioning what really happened whilst narrating the story. Frayn exhibits an array of different ways to portray and manifest the unreliability of memory in ‘Spies’. To begin with, Frayn portrays the unreliability of memory in the very beginning of the book by imposing significance on it: the book opens with old Stefan Weitzler returning to the place where he grew up after an absence of 50 years, and remembered, or “half-remembered” as he …show more content…
This is exemplified by “But what did Stephen make of them all? What did he actually understand?” By posing rhetorical questions that interrupts the storyline, Frayn reveals that Stefan doesn’t actually understand Stephen’s thoughts, as he is constantly trying to guess what Stephen thought of the things that happened as a boy as the story goes on. It seems as if Stefan has pieces of the puzzle of his memory but he is unable to form the complete picture. Frayn depicts the unreliability of memory by making Stefan wonder what the reality is and thus making the readers ponder what really happened. He is stating that Stefan eventually understood what happened but is unable to remember when Stephen came to his epiphany. This reiterates that parts of Stefan’s memory is vague or even lost completely, thus making us recognise the unreliability of his