57 pages • 1 hour read
Rebecca SteadLiar & Spy
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2012A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Georges
As the protagonist and unreliable first-person narrator of the novel, Georges is approximately 12 years old and is in the seventh grade. He is characterized by his meekness, his quiet reserve, and his tendency to detach from unpleasant or painful situations. Georges is an only child and comes from a happy, loving family. He is very isolated at school and begins the novel friendless, with no one to support him as he deals with Dallas and Carter’s bullying. Georges’s one real friend, Jason, has also abandoned him in favor of joining the “cool” kids, which include Georges’s bullies. As the novel develops, Georges begins to make social connections. His confidence builds, and he becomes a unifying force amongst the outcasts and bullying victims of his school.
Georges’s friendship with Safer, an unusual boy who lives in the apartment building, helps Georges to accept his own quirks and to value and respect the quirks of others. When he goes to school, Georges thinks of himself as a “hard G”—someone who can’t be touched or bothered by anything that happens. In reality, he spends a lot of time making himself small so that he will not draw the attention of the bullies. With Safer, however, Georges is able to relax, knowing that his true self is accepted without question or judgment. It is arguably because of his relationship with Safer that Georges is able to befriend Bob English, another student in his grade, and to embrace the role of leader that he takes on within the group of outcasts that constitute the Blue Team.
By the end of the novel, Georges’s confidence increases considerably. He is able to confront his fears, dismantle his denial about his mother’s illness, and bring together the Blue Team in a plan that undermines the power of Dallas and Carter, earning a reprieve for all of Dallas’s targets. He also uses his newfound confidence to help Safer tackle his own fears, encouraging and supporting his friend as he ventures further and further out of the apartment building. Georges begins the novel as a meek, passive, detached boy who grows through the course of the narrative into a proactive, unifying leader who empowers others to step out of their comfort zones and stand up for themselves.
Also significant to Georges’s characterization is his tendency to compartmentalize and detach from pain and conflict. He does this with the bullying at school, minimizing the incidents to tiny “dots” that can be overlooked in favor of the big picture. He similarly distances himself from the truth of his mother’s illness, simply refusing to acknowledge to himself that it is happening in an effort to avoid the pain of confronting the possibility of grief. This is another area of growth for Georges within the novel. By the end of the story, he has changed his perspective on “the little things” and acted to make improvements in his day-to-day life. He also confronts his mother’s illness and visits her at the hospital, fulfilling the novel’s message that unpleasant things need to be confronted.
Safer
Safer is a 12-year-old boy and a resident of Georges’s apartment building. He lives on the sixth floor with his mother, father, older brother, and younger sister. Safer is intelligent and odd. He’s afraid of many things—perhaps most things—and rarely leaves his apartment building. Safer and his sister do not attend school; Safer’s older brother, Pigeon, recently started attending high school, and Safer is angry about this, feeling betrayed. Georges thinks that Safer’s younger sister, Candy, may only stay home for Safer’s sake even though she really wants to attend school, too. Safer is an unusual boy with interests that he immerses himself in completely, and he has an impressive breadth of knowledge for anyone, let alone a 12-year-old.
Safer has a vivid imagination and a quick wit. He invents the spy game about Mr. X and creates thrilling scenarios for the boys to enact. Safer believes that they are playing together, and that this is a shared game of make-believe. Safer has likely had few, if any, friends outside of his siblings, and he lacks many of the expectations that Georges has for how people their age should interact. It is perhaps Safer’s lack of social experience that leads to the conflict between the two boys; he has spent his life engaging in imaginative pursuits with his siblings and has not faced the pressure that Georges feels to grow up and become “cool.”
One of Safer’s defining possessions is the giant ring of keys he carries with him. Safer is a child of the building and seems to know all the other residents. Safer is a dog walker, and many of his keys are spare keys to residents’ apartments. This indicates that he is a trustworthy and responsible person. Though his world is limited to the building, Safer does not see it as being small. Instead, he makes the building interesting and vibrant both by recognizing the life that already happens, and by imagining possibilities that expand its limitations.
Georges’s Father
Georges’s father is an unnamed character, and Georges’s only present parent throughout the novel. He is an architect—what Georges describes as “the artist type”—who values old buildings and antiques (93). Georges’s father is a kind and compassionate man who tries to support Georges by not pushing him to acknowledge his mother’s illness or absence. It can be inferred that many of the hours he spends on the phone in the evenings are with Georges’s mother, talking to his sick wife in the hospital. This suggests that Georges’s parents have a strong and loving relationship. The willingness of Georges’s father to be emotionally frank with Georges shows that he values honesty and communication.
Georges’s parents offer a balance in the theme of The Big Picture Versus the Daily Details. While Georges’s mother directs him to focus on the big picture, Georges’s father reminds him that the dots (the smaller incidents in life) also matter. He encourages Georges to take steps to address Dallas’s harassment and bullying. He offers to speak to school administration on Georges’s behalf but trusts and respects Georges enough to let him handle the situation in his own way.
Georges’s Mother (Sara)
Georges’s mother, Sara, is a nurse. She is “the scientist type,” in contrast to Georges’s father’s “artist type” (93). The couple met in a college class called “Physics for Poets” (93). Georges’s mother emphasizes a positive outlook on life and advises Georges to think about “the big picture” rather than the “little stuff.” She uses Seurat’s pointillist style to illustrate this idea for Georges, and he takes her lesson to heart, saying to himself, “Like Mom says, life is a million dots making one gigantic picture. And maybe the big picture is nice, maybe it’s amazing, but if you’re standing with your face pressed up against a bunch of black dots, it’s hard to tell” (90). She also has a “famous theory that if you smile for no reason at all you will actually start to feel happy” (3). Sara’s advice is well-intentioned, but Georges takes it to an extreme, minimizing the importance of all the painful and unpleasant things that happen to him every day at school.
Sara’s positive outlook can also be seen in her response to Georges’s father’s firing. She calls it a “blessing in disguise because Dad’s always talked about starting his own business, and now he’s finally done it” (13). Her positive spin is also demonstrated when she tells Georges’s father that she’s going to pick up the extra shifts they’d offered her at work; Georges’s father points out that she hates the night shifts, but she denies it This is what makes Georges realize that his father getting laid off is “more serious than they were pretending it was” (76). Sara represents the “big picture” part of the balanced approach that Georges’s parents have in life.
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