Summary and Analysis: Fifth Business

Fifth Business:

                This is a novel by Robertson Davies.  The whole novel is a letter the protagonist is writing to the Headmaster of the school where he worked.  It is in first person, with an academic and authoritative tone predominantly devoid of emotional descriptions, with very little rich imagery. 

·         Plot: The novel begins with Dunstable Ramsay writing a letter to the current Headmaster of the school where he taught.  He claims to be complaining of an article which portrayed him in a (he thought) insignificant light.  However, he then proceeds to describe his whole life story in detail.  He begins when he was small and having a snowball fight with his best friend/enemy Percy Stanton.  Percy threw a snowball with a rock in it at Dunstable, but Dunstable dodged and it hit the pregnant wife of the Baptist priest, Mary Dempster.  She went into labor, delivered a premature baby Paul, and was forever afterward “simple.”  Dunstable had a pretty indifferent relationship with his family, but his mother made him go over and help and care for Mary Dempster.  He grew to love her.  However, Mary sleeps with a tramp, causing the town to scorn her.  Dunny stands up for her and teaches Paul card tricks.  He is beaten for continuing to associate with her, prompting him to join the military.  In battle, he sees her face as the Madonna, saving his life.  He recovers due to and enters a relationship with a nurse called Diana, but does not marry her because he thinks she will be too mothering.  He goes to college, constantly fuming with silent jealousy and admiration of Percy, who attends his university.  Percy and Leola marry, but their relationship ends in shambles because Leola can’t keep up with him (he is mind-blowingly wealthy and successful).  Dunny becomes a teacher and ends up teaching for forty years, all the while the Staunton’s confidant.  During the course of his academia, he develops an obsession with saints that causes him to travel to South America and run into the magician troupe that contains Paul (who had run away with a circus) and Liesl.  He and Liesl talk about his role in the universe, then sleep together.  He also discusses the fact that Mary may be a saint with     

·         Characters:

o   Dunstable Ramsay:  the protagonist who is writing the letter of his life to justify his existence.  He is an unreliable narrator, twisting events to put himself in a better light.  At the same time, he is confusing in his intentions because the one thing you can be certain of is that Dunstable does not know himself.  On one hand, he wants to validate his own existence as someone important.  He also seems to want to paint himself as a saint, a martyr, someone who is bearing other people’s problems and crosses.  But he also wants to paint himself as someone imperfect, humble, and insignificant—perhaps because he thinks that a saint wouldn’t think of himself as a good person.  But the reality is that Dunstable (whether important or not) isn’t saint-like.  He is narcissistic, selfish, and jealous, caught in a lifelong identity crisis.  He tries to be objective, but views himself  unconsciously as superior to everyone else because of that “objectivity.”  Altogether, and ironic character who’s quest for identity fails, never knows himself, and is unable to escape the importance of his actions but insignificance of his thoughts.

o   Mary Dempster: the sweet, mad woman who lives next door to Dunstable.  She is said to laugh at nothing and to be sweet to everyone, and resembles in many ways the Virgin Mary (especially in the birth of her son Paul).  Dunstable suspects she is either a saint or a fool-saint, because she has preformed three “miracles.”  Mary seems to be entirely selfless and unconcerned about her own existence.  All that matters is other people.  She is utterly devoted to everyone she encounters, and is unconcerned about her own reputation or happiness.

o   Amasa Dempster: the passive husband of Mary, who views her as his burden, though he originally seemed to love her.

o   Percy “Boy” Staunton: Percy is the eternally successful golden boy, whom confides in Dunny and is eventually killed to avenge his accidental attack on Mrs. Dempster.  He thinks himself blameless, and is constantly aspiring to greater things.  He is obsessed with the Prince of Whales—his most desperate wish is to be, essentially, royalty—revered and wealthy.  His family is more of a slot filled for his position than anything else.  He is utterly oblivious to the feelings of others—a kind of anti-saint, selfish but not malicious.

o   Leola: the first love interest of Dunstable, who eventually marries Percy.  She is weak, dependent, and likes to be admired.  She has little drive, but hates to disappoint.  She needs a man—when she finds out she doesn’t really have one, she tries to kill herself.

o   Liesl: the gargoyle-like but brilliant and charismatic Swiss magician.  She is in a relationship with practically everyone around her, and is in some ways the real Fifth Business.  She is Dunny’s confidant and tries to help him toward self-realization.  It is unclear what her motives are, or whether she is actually telling him the truth about himself.  She is a very mysterious figure; one character refers to her as the devil.

o   Paul Dempster (aka Magnus Eisengrim):  Paul is Mary’s son, and in many ways is a Jesus figure.  The relationship he has with his parents, like so many others in the novel, has molded him into a brooding, serious, mysterious figure who wants to instill fear and awe in his audience.  His Jesus-like origins, when juxtaposed with his vengeful character (he kills Percy Staunton), seems to point to the fact that there is no such thing as an entirely “saint-like” disposition. 

o   Padre Blazon: a religious old man who is one of Dunny’s two confidants.  He asks a lot of questions, but doesn’t provide any definitive answers.  He is a very positive character—he seems to accept the impossibility of knowing about the divine for sure.

·         Theme: People’s thoughts or emotions don’t matter—all that matters are their actions.  The only perfection that exists is the perfect storm of coincidences, manipulated by a divine to some unknown end.  We just have to follow along in our designated role.

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o   While Dunny is constantly struggling with his identity, his true self, and how he views the world, none of it ultimately makes any difference.  He never finds his true identity, but it doesn’t really affect his actions.  Dunny, in a sense, fulfills his role.  Despite his mixed feelings and resentment for Boy, he never does anything about it and remains his Fifth Business confidant.  When Liesl tries to tell him about himself he essentially ignores her.   He does what he thinks he should—goes to war, helps Mary—but doesn’t really go the extra mile that makes the reader (me, at least) believe he is actually driven to do this things.  He fulfills his role as the butterfly in the cycle, but his raging thoughts, his whole letter, doesn’t affect the world at all.  Despite his thoughts, he just has to follow along in his role.

o   While Mary and Paul are much like the Virgin Madonna and Jesus, they aren’t entirely perfect.  Paul in born in December at a time when he should not have been, to an angelic mother named Mary.  While the perfect storm of coincidence that resulted in Paul's birth reflects the birth of Christ in some ways, there is a problem with this interperetation.  Mary sleeps with a tramp and utterly lacks prudence (causing some to doubt her “legitimate” sainthood).  Paul is a brooding, vengeful character, scarred for life by the adults he encountered early on.  His last act recorded by Dunny is the murder of Percy Boy Staunton.  Perfect saints may have existed at one time—and even that is doubtful—but there is no such thing as perfection now.   The circumstances of Paul’s birth—the cause of all their troubles—are also very…coincidental.  It seems as though something is pulling strings to make Paul the way he is…yet all he does in the end is kill Boy.  The reader—and Dunny—doesn’t know why things have turned out this way.  But both need to accept that they have.

o   The fact that Paul’s most important action seems to be the murder of Boy, the reader must question why everything has come together to get rid of him.  What does Boy represent that needs to be eradicated?  One possibility is that Boy is constantly striving for perfection, the epitome of success.  On the surface, he seems to be “perfect.”  (Though Dunny alternately disagrees and agrees…he sees Boy as a kind of hated, but god-like figure).  One could argue that Boy is the ultimate mortal striving to be divine—more so than Dunny or anyone else.  Therefore, the “fool-saint” of Boy must be taken out, because perfection cannot exist on Earth.  But this is ambiguous, because what has Boy done that has set him so dangerously close to perfection, and why is it Paul and Liesl that must do away with him?

·         Quotes:

o   “Having me in the dining-room was almost the equivalent of having a Raeburn on the walls; I was classy, I was heavily varnished, and I offended nobody.”  This is how Dunny felt about his relationship with the Stauntons.  This essentially sums up his role as Fifth Business—the necessary fly on the wall.  This is his role, and he cannot break free from it.

o   “Life itself is too great a miracle for us to make so much fuss about potty little reversals of what we pompously assume to be the natural order.”  This quote exemplifies the message that mortals cannot possibly comprehend how things “should be.”  We just have to go along with our roles.

o   Liesl refers to Paul’s magic as “clockwork.”  This reinforces the idea that some unknown divine being has set the world in mechanized motion where emotions have no merit.  Everyone is a specific gear in the clock—they function the way they need to for the machine to run, and it doesn’t matter if they like it or not.