Fifth Business
· Robertson Davies
· Setting
o Canada
· Characters
o Dunstan Ramsey
o Mary Dempster
o Paul Dempster
o Boy Stuanton
o Lisel
· Plot
o Boy is taunting Dunny. He throws a snowball and accidentally hits Mary Dempster.
o She is prego and falls. She goes into labor that night and has Paul.
o Dunny becomes obsessed with Mary and spends a lot of time with her. Because of this he becomes unpopular at school. He later realizes he loves her.
o Dunny starts to work in a library and picks up magic and saints as his favorite reading topics.
o Dunny starts to teach Paul magic but his dad, the pastor won’t allow it. Dunny gets banned from the Dempster household
o Mary sleeps with a tramp of a man and becomes disgraced. Amasa (her hubby) basically gives up his life in shame. He quits being a priest and just sits around the house all day.
o Boy is dating Leola but has sex with Mabel. He is then sent away to Colbourne College
o Dunny’s brother Willie becomes sick because a roll of paper fell on him. Dunny watches him die and panics. He gets Mary and she prays brining him back to life. No one believes him.
o Mrs. Ramsey makes Dunny chose between her and Mary so he enlists in the army.
o Before he goes he has a fling with Leola (Boy’s ex)
o During WWI he is injured at the Third Battle of Ypres. He sees a statue of the Virgin and Child and mistakes it for Mary’s face.
o Diana, his nurse, helps Dunny recover emotionally and physically. They have sex. She names him Dunstan after a saint who refused the devil when Dunstan refuses to marry her.
o His parents died in the 1918 Spanish Flu
o He is awarded the Victoria Cross
o He comes home and is shocked to find Boy and Leola are engaged.
o Dunny goes to the U of Toronto to get his MA in history
o Boy is doing financially amazing and gives tips to Dunny in the stock market. He also tells him about all the girls he’s cheating on Leola with.
o Dunstan takes a teaching job
o He travels to Europe (where Leola and Boy are on their honeymoon). There, he tries to find his statue and becomes obsessed with Catholic saints and their histories. He becomes an expert in hagiology
o Dunstan becomes a weird ass teacher
o Boy tries to integrate Leola into his high class life with little success. He becomes an aide to the Prince of Wales and his son is born and named after him
o The tramp who slept with Mary now works to help the needy. He thinks she is a saint
o Dunstan thinks Mary preformed 3 miracles now
o A priest tells him that Mary is a “Fool-Saint”
o Dunstan finds Mary and gets to know her all over again in Toronto where she is staying with her aunt
o Boy helps Dunstan get through the Great Depression
o Dunstan meets a traveling circus in Austria and finds Paul is a magician for them
o Paul is now called Faustus Legrand. He steals Dunstan’s wallet
o Boy doesn’t love Leola anymore. Dunstan raises concerns over their son David’s fathership (he had sex with Leola)
o He puts Mary in a public mental hospital when her aunt dies
o He becomes recognized for his work in hagiography and goes to Europe. There he meets Padre Blazon. Padre tells him that Mary saved him for a reason and that he should figure that out and not feel guilty
o He writes a book about saints. Then another one about why people need them
o Prince Edward gets the throne and abdicates it to the horror of the Staunton family. At Christmas Dinner, Dunstan comes over to find Boy has left, and Leola crying. She tries to commit suicide. Her suicide note explains her love for Dunstan and the kids and nurse probably know.
o Leola dies of pneumonia and Dunstan takes care of her funeral as Boy is too busy
o Dunstan is named headmaster of his school temporarily during WWII. He is asked to set down and is angry. Eventually he agrees to be a teacher again if he gets to take a 6 month vacation
o In Mexico City, Paul is performing under a new name. Magnus Eisengrim
o Liesl is very ugly but really smart and charming.
o She gets Dunstan to write an autobiography about Paul
o He likes this showgirl called Faustina and spies on her when she’s naked. He becomes very vulgar and inappropriate towards most of the girls. Faustina and Liesl kiss and Dunstan is depressed by it.
o Liesl tries to seduce Dunstan and he breaks her nose
o Liesl then explains he needed to release his anger and actually live his life because he is the 5th business.
o They then have sex.
o Mrs. Dempster is told that Dunstan found Paul and it upsets her a lot
o Boy goes into politics and remarries to Denyse
o Mary dies
o Dunstan sees Padre Blazon who gives him a thumbs up on the self discovery
o Boy dies either of murder by Paul or suicide. I’m leaning towards murder.
o Paul was in Toronto for a show and he, Dunstan and Boy meet up and dished the dirt about money, Leola, and what happened to Mary.
o The rock that hit Mary goes missing and is later found in Boy’s mouth
o During Paul’s show, someone yells out “who killed Boy Staunton” and Dunstan suffers a heart attack. The End.
· Author’s Style and Narrative Voice
o Point of View
§ Written from the POV of Dunstan. He is subjective to his own story and its telling but he seems to get it written pretty accurately. It is written in the form of a letter.
o Tone
§ Slight bitterness, annoyance. Dunstan feels like he needs to prove himself to the headmaster and makes the very personal but with fairly less emotion case.
o Imagery
§ There is little descriptive wording
o Symbolism
§ Liesel
· To Dunstan, Liesel is the missing link in his puzzle and shows him how to better understand himself
§ Mary Dempster
· Acts as his fool saint. Mary
· Quotes
o “You must get to know your personal devil”
§ Liesel’s line
§ Each of us has something inside of us that is evil. In order to truly know ourselves and complete this lifetime’s journey you need to know what you’re capable of or rather what evil stuff is inside you.
o “We all think of ourselves as stars”
§ Liesel’s line
§ We are all the stars of our own lives. Dunstan however is the awkward one out. He doesn’t play the leading role in his life’s story; instead he is the fifth business.
· Theme
o Know the part you play in your life and don’t be a passenger in your own life
§ All of Dunstan’s most significant moments cast him as a minor character. As a consequence, Dunny doesn’t really know himself. He finds himself trying to validate himself in the writing of this letter. Dunny is the 5th Business because he has such a limited role in his life. All of his major life events actually have him playing a limited and nonessential role.
§ Dunny is not the main cause of the accident with Mary. He did not throw the snowball nor did he drop his wife. Another example is the blame he puts on himself for the death of Leola. He was not a large part of her life, nor was he her husband who should have been there for her. He was just the friend that she happened to like.
§ Dunny is not the main cause of the accident with Mary. He did not throw the snowball nor did he drop his wife. Another example is the blame he puts on himself for the death of Leola. He was not a large part of her life, nor was he her husband who should have been there for her. He was just the friend that she happened to like.
