Fifth Business Synthesis and Analysis

Fifth Business by Robertson Davies

• Author: Robertson Davies

·        Setting: Various places in Canada, Europe, and in Mexico City, from early 1900s to late1960s.

• Plot:
• On his way home from sledding with Percy Dunstable dodges a snowball and it hits Mrs. Dempster, causing her to fall and go into labor.  Paul is born early and unfit for the world, but he survives.
• As a boy Dunny becomes interested in saints and magic.  He also becomes friends with Mary Dempster as he often is doing chores in their house.
• Dunny is kicked out of the Dempster house for corrupting Paul by teaching him about the saints (Mr. Dempster is a Baptist minister) and for teaching him magic.
• The incident where Mary Dempster is found with the tramp then follows, this causes the town to think she is truly crazy and for people to call her a whore.  Her husband ties a rope harness to her and she cannot leave the house, but Dunny sneaks in and visits her.
• One day Willie, having been very ill, and he died.  So Dunny went running and fetched Mary, who comes back with him and prays for him and revives him.
• After this everyone thinks Dunny is crazy too, so he eventually goes off and enlists in the army to fight in World War I.
• During his time in war Dunstable earns the Victoria Cross award for bravery in an act that ended in him seeing a statue of the Virgin Mary that had Mary Dempster’s face.
• After the war Dunny is in a hospital because he lost consciousness, he also had his leg amputated.  Here he meets Diana who brings him into the world sexually.  He avoids getting married to her, but she does rename him Dunstan instead of Dunstable.
• Dunstan returns home after this and is welcomed, he learns that Percy and Leola are engaged, that his parents died in the flu epidemic, that Paul ran away with the circus, and that Mary Dempster no longer lives there since she went crazy after Paul left and Mr. Dempster died.
• Dunstan goes to college and earns a degree in history.  He stays friends with Percy, now Boy, Staunton and Leola, who get married.  After he graduates Dunstan takes a job as a teacher at the college and goes on vacation to Europe to look at saints and find the statue again.
• He does not find the statue on this trip, but he gains the hobby of hagiography while traveling.
• Dunstan continues teaching and in the process meets the tramp from Deptford again, he hears this man’s story and decides that Mary Dempster is a saint and tries to find her three miracles.  Dunstan is told that Mary Dempster is a fool-saint, not a real saint, but he locates her anyway, and becomes her new friend.
• Boy keeps Dunstan out of the Great Depression, and Dunstan goes back to Europe where he meets Paul who is a small and untalented circus.
• After this when Dunstan is back in Canada the book turns back to the relationship with Boy and Leola.  Leola can’t keep up with Boy’s social life.  Soon their first child is born.
• Dunstan becomes Mary Dempster’s caretaker and he puts her in a hospital for the insane where he visits her every week.
• Dunstan visits Europe again after he gains a reputation in the hagiography field after an article of his.  While there he meets Padre Blazon who helps him understand there is more to a saint than their miracles, they had an earthly side too.
• The Stauntons are falling apart; Leola finds out about Boy’s affairs and tries to kill herself after she tries to turn to Dunstan for comfort but receives none.  She doesn’t manage it though, and she continues to live weakly.
• Leola dies of pneumonia later, and Dunstan has to handle the funeral.  He is named the headmaster of the college during World War II but is kicked out of the position after the war ends.  So he takes six months off and goes to Mexico City.
• In Mexico City he again is looking at saint related things but meets Paul at his new magic show.  Soon after this he meets Liesl the brains of the show, he ghost-writes the autobiography of Magnus Eisengrim and helps bring in new acts, like the Brazen Head.
• Dunstan thinks he has fallen in love with Faustina, but once he sees her kissing Liesl, no longer thinks so.  Liesl comes in that night to try and seduce him but instead he attacks her, which was what she had wanted him to do, to release his pent up anger.
• Liesl tells Dunstan that he is Fifth Business, as is seen in the way he hasn’t really lived his own life.
• Dunstan tells Mary Dempster that he has found Paul, once he returns, but this turns him into a villain in her eyes and he can no longer talk to her.
• Boy makes a little appearance in politics and gets married again to a woman who seemed to arrange it all herself.
• Mrs. Dempster dies and Dunstan takes care of all the arrangements.
• While on another of his trips to Europe Dunstan again meets Padre Blazon and he finds the Madonna statue again.
• When he returns to Canada the story jumps to Boy’s death.  Dunstan explains this as probably the aftermath of the conversation between Boy, Dunstan, and Paul that occurred after the magic show had traveled to Toronto.  The conversation was full of accusations where Dunstan tells Boy he threw the rock-filled snowball that inevitably made Paul’s mother crazy.
• Once everyone leaves Dunstan realizes the rock is missing.  The next day Boy is dead.
• At the last performance of the magic show the Brazen Head is asked who killed Boy, and it replies vaguely implicating five different people.  When the question was asked Dunstan had his heart attack.
• Dunstan finally ends his letter to the headmaster.
• Main Characters:

o       Dunstan (Dunstable) Ramsay – Dunstan is a man who knows he is the important character, but not the hero in other people’s stories, he is fifth business.  Dunstan is very stubborn, he will not give up on his hunt for saints, and he will not give up on Mary Dempster.

o       Percy Boyd “Boy” Staunton – Boy is a character who always wanted to be loved, that was all he wanted to have, so he developed himself into the public figure that everyone could like in the good times.

o       Paul Dempster aka Magnus Eisengrim – Paul is really the main character of the story even though Dunstan seems to point to Boy as the main character.  Paul is the magician who wants his respect to come from fear, so he chooses the name that is related to a wolf.

o       Mary Dempster – Mary is the saint Dunstan has been following for his whole life.  She is not crazy as Dunstan sees her, but the rest of the world sees her as crazy.

o       Liesl – Liesl is the “High Priestess” of the group, she has the mysterious powers, the intellect, and the skills to make a magic show.  Even more, she understands Dunstan and helps him see himself.

·        Narrative Voice:  The narrative voice in this novel is interesting because the structure is that of a memoir of Dunstan’s that the editorializing and the voice that delivers the bulk of the information is that of the main character.

• Author’s Style:
• Point of View: The point of view that Davies brings to this novel is one concerned with the archetypes found in Jungian psychology.  This point of view adds a tremendous amount of strength to the characters, like Liesl who is essentially the High Priestess, which is shown in her power and how mysterious her motives are.
• Tone:  The tone in Fifth Business is reflective and somewhat defensive as most of the novel is written in the form of a memoir that is supposed to prove that Dunstan’s life has purpose.
• Imagery:  The imagery in the book was used to show the town very clearly at the beginning.  This was to emphasize the small, rural background of three of the greatest men in the world for their time.
• Symbolism:  Symbolism can be found in this book in the synchronicity of the events, how coincidence after coincidence occurs, and in the archetypes that Davies is writing into the story.
• Quotes:
• “And you must have Fifth Business because he is the one who knows the secret of the hero’s birth, or comes to the assistance of the heroine when she thinks all is lost, or keeps the hermitess in her cell, or may even be the cause of somebody’s death if that is part of the plot” (231). 
• This is a description of the kind of things Fifth Business does in a play, and many of them are things that Dunstan does.

·        Theme:  Depending on what perspective you look at someone from they could have completely different roles in the story.

• Dunstan chooses not to be the hero of his own story but the Fifth Business of others.
• From Dunstan’s point of view the hero is Boy, bur really Paul is the main character that Dunstan is the Fifth Business to.