Fifth Business Summary/Analysis

• Summary: Dunny's story begins with a well-aimed snowball thrown by Percy Boyd Staunton that catches a pregnant Mary Dempster in the back of the head, and, because of a failure of her husband to catch her, leads to the premature birth of Paul Dempster. As someone raised in a strict Presbyterian household with a firery Scottish mother, the guilt from this incident consumes Dunny for the rest of his life. Several years later, Dunny becomes assistant librarian at the town library, and, in his free time there, he teaches Paul magic tricks. This, however, prompts a backlash from Amasa Dempster and his prohibtion from contact with that family. Dunny goes against Mr. Dempster's wishes, and continues to develop a close relationship with the now ostracized Mrs. Dempster. One night, she goes missing, and after sending the whole town in search of her, they find her in the gravel pit, in the "act of copulation". This further increases the isolation of the Dempsters from the town. Dunny's brother, in the meantime, is fighting for his life against a mysterious illness, and the town has turned out to help care for him. When Dunny is watching over him during the county fair, Willie goes into convulsions and dies. Instead of running for the doctor, Dunny gets Mrs. Dempster. She performs her second miracle when she brings Willie back to life. After this incident, Dunny becomes increasingly associated with Mrs. Dempster, and this creates tensions throughout the town as well as in his household. As a response to this stress, Dunny enlists in the army and goes to fight in WWI. During a raid on a machine gun nest, Dunny is hit by shrapnel and as he is being buried by a buring building, a flare lights up a statue of the Virgin Mary, and Dunny imagines that he sees Mary Dempster. Dunny is rescued and recovers in a hospital in England. While in the hospital, he learns that he will be recieving the VC, and also that his parents died in the influenza pandemic of 1918. Dunny becomes romantically involved with Diana, the nurse who helped him regain his health. When it comes time to talk about marriage, however, Dunny backs out of the relationship because of the similarities Diana holds to Dunny's mother. Dunny returns to Deptford to find out that many of the town's citizens died in the pandemic, including Amasa Dempster. Paul ran off with a circus after his father's death. Dunny continues to Toronto to earn various degrees in history, and then finds a job as a schoolmaster. He really begins to delve further into hagiology during this time period, supplementing it with trips to various places around the world, searching for saints and their stories. He contributes to the publications of the Bollandists, and gains an informative friend in Padre Blazon, who gives him advice on Dunny's fool-saint, Mary Dempster. While in Europe, Dunny runs into Paul, who is part of a travelling circus. Many years later, he meets Paul again, this time in Mexico City where Paul seems to be a completely different person. Dunny is reeled into Paul's, now Magnus Eisengrim's, circus. There he sleeps with the "devil" and is told he is fifth business. After ghost writing Paul's fictional autobiography, and by doing so is paralleling his role as fifth business because he did create Paul, just not the way the autobiography says, Dunny returns to Canada. He reconnects with Leola and Boy, and begins to see the complete depth of their marriage issues. Leola attempts to commit suicide, and finally succeeds in contracting pneumonia. After she dies, Dunny finds a note from Leola that confesses her love for him; sadly, he never loved her back. Boy remarries Denyse, an avid politician, who has a daughter liked even less than herself by Boy's kids. When Magnus Eisengrim visits Canada, Boy mysteriously commits suicide by driving his car off a bridge at incredible speeds. After reexamining the scene between him, Boy, and Magnus the night before, Dunny sees that Magnus was involved in Boy's death.
• Basics:
• Author: Robertson Davies
• Setting: Canada, Europe (mainly England), South/Central America; 20th century
• Significant Characters: Dunstable/Dunsten/Dunny Ramsey ("fifth business", hagiographer), Percy "Boy" Staunton (Dunny's "friend" from childhood, very successful (financially), throws the snowball), Paul (christ figure), Mary Dempster (went mad after Boy hit her with the snowball), Diana (Dunny's second mother)
• Narrative voice:
• POV: 5th is written from the first person point of view, specifically, from Dunny's point of view. This allows us to see into the thoughts and emotions of "fifth business".
• Tone: Dunny is a very critical person, and he examines every circumstance that takes place. Therefore, the tone of the book is thoughtful, or analytic.
• Imagery: A very important image in Dunny's life is that of the Virgin Mary. The specific one he saw was when he was losing consciousness after being hit by a flare in WWII. He devotes his life to the study of saints and trying to find this specific image. When he eventually finds it in Salzburg, he is very detached and accepting when he can't obtain a picture of it to keep, because he knows he has been thinking about this image for the majority of his adult life.
• Symbolism:
• The Christ story: Mary Dempster is symbolic of Mary, the mother of God. She is caught in the middle of a deserted town when her labor is induced, and she gives birth to Paul, the symbolic Christ figure. Paul spends his life performing magic tricks (i.e. miracles). Dunny's obsession with saints is incorporated into this motif.
• The twice-born: Both Dunny and Paul are people know as the "twice-born". Their rebirth is signified by a name change; after WWII, Dunny changes his name with the help of Diana (his second mother), and Paul changes his name after coming into his own as a magician.
• Upper-class: The difficulties Boy and the people associated with him experience appear to be a result of his ambition and the success is the product. Leola "fell in love" with Boy before he left Deptford; the success he gained greatly altered his character and led to her extreme dissatisfaction. Her suicide had a serious emotional effect on her children for the rest of their life. This symbolism demonstrates the hypocrisy of the upper class, and its fixation on material things.
• Theme: The changes people experience during life as a result of events experienced have either positive effects, in which they teach the person valuable lessons about life, or, more often than not, negative effects which lead the person on a destructive path. The destructive path is obvious in Boy's life: he fails to realize Leola's dissatisfaction, even after her death. Additionally, his success erased any thought in his mind about his humble beginnings, including the act he committed that ended up consuming Dunny's life. Paul, on the other hand, experiences a very wide variety of circumstances, and is able to adjust and become successful off of them. Dunny's role as fifth business is important because he is the one who connects this story and brings about the life-changing events.

*This blog was completed late and therefore has no peer comment.