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Fifth Business Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com Fifth Business • Setting: Deptford Canada, Europe, South America. INTRODUCTION • Climax: Dunstan finally confronts Boy about his role in the BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF ROBERTSON DAVIES Dempster’s tragic lives. Boy astonishes him by revealing he doesn’t even remember the Dempster’s existence. William Robertson Davies was an acclaimed author of novels, • Antagonist: Percy (Boy) Staunton plays, and essays as well as a journalist and professor. He grew • Point of View: First person (Dunstan Ramsay) up in a small town in Ontario in a Presbyterian household, and even as a child demonstrated a love of reading and drama. He studied at Upper Canada College and Queen’s University EXTRA CREDIT before leaving Canada to study at Oxford, in England. There he That’s Not All. Fifth Business is only the first and most famous met his wife, Brenda Matthews. He returned to Canada, installment of The Deptford Trilogy. All of the books focus on teaching at Trinity College and writing and acting prolifically. the effects of the same single event: a snowball striking Mary He became one of Canada’s most renowned and respected Dempster in the head. authors, many of his books drawing on themes from his own life: his childhood in a small town, his religious conversion from Presbyterianism to Anglicanism, and his love of stage PLOT SUMMARY performance, academics, and learning. He died in Toronto a The novel takes the form of a letter written by Dunstan Ramsay highly decorated and famous author. to the Headmaster of Colborne College, where Dunstan is a teacher. A recent article in the school newspaper has portrayed HISTORICAL CONTEXT Dunstan as dull and boring, and he wishes to correct this The novel spans both WWI (in which Dunstan Ramsay fights) perception by telling his strange, marvelous, and complicated and WWII as well as the Great Depression. It examines the life story to the headmaster. psychological effect of these events on the lives of individuals He begins with the night in the small town of Deptford Ontario throughout Canada and Europe, often referring to the thinking that Percy Boyd Staunton threw a snowball at him, but instead of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, whose work was influential in hit the head of Mary Dempster, who is pregnant. Mary then the West during WWI and afterward. In many ways the novel prematurely gives birth to her son Paul as a result of the constitutes an examination of the psychological and spiritual accident. Her husband, Amasa Dempster, a devout Baptist content of historical accounts of the prewar and postwar minister is burdened by his wife after the accident, for the blow periods. to the head makes her “simple.” Mrs. Ramsay, Dunstan’s mother, takes care of Mrs. Dempster, pitying her because she RELATED LITERARY WORKS has become ill equipped for sensible domestic life and because Texts referenced in the book are usually religious or her husband’s religion prevents him from thinking clearly and mythological in nature. The Bible (especially the Old helping her. Testament) is referenced repeatedly, and compared to fictive or Dunstan also takes care of Mary and looks after Paul after mythological texts like Arabian Nights or various Greek myths. school. He comes to love Mrs. Dempster, partially because he The novel is interested in the differences and similarities feels responsible for her misfortune. Dunstan works in the between fictional and factual writings, and in historical writing library as a child, and develops a love of learning, fantastical (including biography and autobiography) as a kind of art form. stories, mythology, and magic. He teaches Paul magic tricks, but this backfires—Amasa is furious that Dunstan has corrupted his KEY FACTS son with “gambling tricks” and bans Dunstan from his home. One night Mary Dempster goes missing, and Dunstan is part of • Full Title: Fifth Business the search party. He discovers her having sex with a tramp, and • When Written: 1969-1970 when questioned, she serenely confirms the sex was • Where Written: Canada consensual. Amasa takes her home, resigns from the church, • When Published: 1970 and moves her to a small cottage where he keeps her tied up. • Literary Period: Postwar literature Mrs. Ramsay’s sympathy for her is gone, and she forbids Dunstan to see her. Dunstan goes anyway, and the closer he • Genre: Conceptual / speculative fiction, historical fiction, grows to Mrs. Dempster the more he believes there is postwar literature. ©2020 LitCharts LLC v.007 www.LitCharts.com Page 1 Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com something saint-like and holy about her. during World War II, she dies of pneumonia. Dunstan continues Willie, Dunstan’s brother, grows ill as a result of an old back to travel and have success, earning the respect and friendship injury, and one afternoon while Dunstan is looking after him, of the Bollandists, a group of Jesuits who study Saints. His Willie stops breathing. He has no heartbeat, and Dunstan closest friend is Padre Blazon, who encourages him to keep believes he is dead. He gets Mary Dempster, and she touches investigating Mary Dempster’s sainthood. Willie and calls his name, and Willie wakes up. Dunstan tells the Dunstan takes a six-month leave to go to Mexico, where he doctor and his parents what happened, but they call him foolish meets Paul again, who is now a successful and famous magician. and wonder why he didn’t seek out a doctor instead of Mrs. Dunstan is asked to write the autobiography of Eisengrim Dempster. His mother is especially furious, and demands that (Paul’s stage name). During this time Dunstan has a sexual Dunstan choose between her and Mrs. Dempster. He chooses encounter with a hideous, devilish woman named Liesl, who to enlist in the army. tells him he is not living life and has yet to accept himself as a WWI has begun, and shortly before he is shipped out Dunstan human being. This encounter is later remember by Dunstan as develops a timid romantic relationship with Leola, who is his encounter with the Devil, and he believes it was a crucial Percy’s girlfriend, but Percy has been sent away to school and formative event in his life—Padre Blazon will tell him that a because he was caught having sex with another young girl in friendship with the Devil is indeed a good thing. Dunstan town. Leola still loves Percy, but says she loves Dunstan, too. finishes the book about Eisengrim after this encounter, and it is a huge success. Dunstan fares well in the war, remaining uninjured until one day he suffers a blow to his leg after taking out three German Dunstan borrows money from Paul to move Mary to a private machine gun operators. As he lies on the battlefield, sure he will hospital. He stupidly tells her that her son is still alive, and this die, he sees a statue of the Madonna, but her face is the face of drives her mad. She thinks Dunstan is keeping Paul away from Mary Dempster. her, and Dunstan can no longer see her without upsetting her. When Mary dies, Dunstan feels it is his fault and weeps for the Dunstan wakes up six months later from a coma, and finds he first time since childhood. She is cremated, and Dunstan eepsk has lost his leg but has been awarded the Victorian Cross (the the ashes in his room. highest military honor awarded in Canada) and that both his parents have died in the influenza epidemic of 1918. He has a Eventually, Eisengrim brings his show to Canada, and performs romantic relationship with his nurse, Diana Marfleet, but at Colborne College. Dunstan introduces Boy to Eisengrim. realizes she is too much like his mother and ends it on good The three go back to Dunstan’s for a drink, and it is revealed terms. He goes back to Canada to find that Boy (Percy’s new that Boy doesn’t remember the Dempsters ever living in name) and Leola are engaged. Dunstan gets a degree in history, Deptford. Dunstan reveals to story of the snowball to Paul, and becomes a teacher, and has a kind of adult friendship with Boy, Boy says Dunstan has made a big deal out of nothing. Dunstan who often complains to him about Leola’s inadequacies. shows Boy the stone that was enclosed in the snowball—he has kept it as a paperweight all these years. Paul and Boy leave Meanwhile, Dunstan becomes interested in renaissance art together, and Boy is found dead in his car the next day, with the and sainthood and travels around Europe seeking out new stone placed carefully in his mouth. knowledge, leaning new languages, and writing books. He comes across a traveling circus and meets Paul Dempster, who At the next performance of Eisengrim’s show, an audience has no interest in forming a relationship with his mother, who member asks the “brazen head”—the center of a fortune telling has gone insane since he left and Amasa died from the flu, and illusion put on by Eisengrim—who killed Boy Staunton. Liesl, the who is living with her Aunt Bertha. voice of the head, gives a cryptic answer, which Dunstan understands as implicating Boy, Paul, Mary Dempster, and him Back at his school in Canada, Dunstan encounters the tramp (Dunstan), in Boy’s death. Dunstan has a heart attack. When he who slept with Mary—his name is Joel Surgeoner, he is a awakens in the hospital, there is a note from Liesl, apologizing charity worker, and he believes Mary’s act miraculously for causing him trouble and inviting him to live out the rest of reformed him.
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