Robertson davies fifth business

Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikiquote Wikidata item. Series of novels by Robertson Davies. Overview [ edit ]. Fifth Business [ edit ]. Main article: Fifth Business. The Manticore [ edit ]. Main article: The Manticore. World of Wonders [ edit ].

Main article: World of Wonders. Key characters [ edit ]. Dunstan Ramsay [ edit ]. Magnus Eisengrim [ edit ]. Hi Aslan, I understand your point however I have an essay prompt that says: compare and contrast mary dempster, paul dempster, and dunstan ramsay as "wonder workers". Paul Dempster is a magician. His "wonder work" isn't metaphysical so much as psychological.

He is able to manipulate and even hypnotise. The snowball rock in Percy's mouth or the Brazen Head illusion at the end of the book is proof of this. Who gives Paul the name Magnus Eisengrim, or does he rename himself? Also how does this name change represent his rebirth? One day, he is dodging snowballs thrown by his friend and nemesis Percy Boyd Staunton, and one accidentally hits pregnant Mrs.

Dempster , wife to the meek village preacher. She crumples to the ground, and soon goes into premature labor. Though the boy survives, he is small and Mrs. Dempster suffers some brain trauma that leaves her 'simple' in the eyes of the town. Dunstan is henceforth plagued by his conscience; he feels directly responsible for the tragedy, yet tells nobody about his role.

This guilt is exacerbated when Mrs. Ramsay assigns Dunstan as the Dempster's personal caretaker, not trusting Mr. Dempster to handle it himself. Over time, Mrs. Dempster further alienates the town through her bizarre behavior, which is considered improper. Meanwhile, Dunstan lives a relatively isolated life, with Paul Dempster as his only frequent friend.

Through his after-school job at the Deptford library, he finds books on magic and saints, and becomes enamored of both subjects. He teaches Paul about magic, and the boy shows a great facility for it. One night, Mary Dempster goes missing, and Dunstan joins the town search party. He is amongst the few who eventually find her in a dark gravel pit, engaged in carnal activity with a hobo.

The town is appalled not only by her behavior but also by her seeming lack of remorse. She defends the sex as an act of charity: "he wanted it so badly" Dempster is pressured to resign, the family moves to the outskirts of town, and she is kept locked in her house. Though Mrs. Ramsay forbids Dunstan to visit her, he does so secretly. The family is mocked and derided by everyone except for him.

Dunstan begins to see Mrs. Dempster as a saintly figure. Her simple logic and innate spirituality seems to radiate from her, and he basks in her presence. Dempster, who seems to bring him back to life by laying her hands on him. He considers this her first 'miracle. This time, when Mrs. Ramsay more forcefully forbids Dunstan contact, they have a terrible fight and he decides to enlist in the Canadian forces of World War I as a means to escape Deptford.

Before Dunstan departs, he becomes romantically involved with Leola Cruikshank, widely considered the prettiest girl in town and the fancy of Percy Boyd Staunton. It is a juvenile affair, but an enjoyable one. Dunstan leaves Deptford for the battlefields of Europe. With that, Ramsay concludes the story of his life, saying only, "And that, headmaster, is all I have to tell you.

Davies discusses several themes in the novel, perhaps the most important being the difference between materialism and spirituality. Davies asserts religion is not necessarily integral to the idea—demonstrated by the corrupt Reverend Leadbeater who reduces the Bible to mere economic terms. Davies, then an avid student of Carl Jung 's ideas, deploys them in Fifth Business.

Characters are clear examples of Jungian archetypes and events demonstrate Jung's idea of synchronicity. A stone allegedly thrown at Ramsay when he was a child reappears decades later in a scandalous suicide or murder. Ramsay's character is a classic introverted personality, contrasted throughout the book with the extroverted sensuality of Boy Staunton.

Ramsay dedicates his life to genuine religious feeling as he saw it in his 'fool-saint' Mary Dempster, whose son grows up to be the very archetype of the Magician. Robertson Davies' interest in psychology has a massive influence on the actions in the book. Dempster, despite their motherly positions in his life. Carl Jung's concept of individualisation plays a role when Liesl discusses Dunstan's yet-unlived life and the idea that he must have balance in his life.

Erik Erikson's stages of psychosocial development can also be seen in the choices Boy makes compared to the choices Dunstan makes e. Boy chooses intimacy while Dunstan chooses isolation. A genuinely learned man, Davies wrote a prose that both poked fun at pretentious scholarship and enjoyed joking allusions, as in the names of Ramsay's girl friends, Agnes Day, Gloria Mundy and Libby Doe.

He explained these later as "Agnes, the Sufferer — a type well known to all men; Gloria, the Good Time Girl, and Libby, the energetic go-getter". Libby Doe is a play on the word "libido", borrowed from Latin by Freud to mean the inner impulse-driven part of the psyche. Gloria Mundy is a play on the Latin religious phrase Sic transit gloria mundi , or "Thus passes the glory of the world.

There is sectarianism in Deptford dividing the frontier townsfolk between five Christian churches that do not associate with each other under normal circumstances. It takes emergency situations for them to lend aid to each other, but this is conditional aid based on the assumption that certain moral codes will be preserved regardless of faith. For instance, Mary Dempster is a daft-headed girl who habitually flouts the norms of the society, and so she finds herself ostracised and ridiculed by it, evidenced by the fact that no one comes to her aid when her son runs away.

However, she is the only member of Deptford society that Dunstan views as truly 'religious' in her attitude because she lives according to a light that arises from within which he contrasts with her husband's 'deeply religious' attitude, which 'meant that he imposed religion as he understood it on everything he knew or encountered' As a boy, Dunstable is raised as a Presbyterian, but he also takes an avid interest in Catholic saints.

He grows up to develop a more spiritual mode of life that is not reliant on external structures. For Dunstan Ramsay, religion and morality are immediate certainties in life, and the events of the novel show how moral lapses have a way of 'snowballing' and coming back to haunt one. Davies and Dunstan are at pains to illustrate just how fluid the concept of historical fact really is, and that it is not so distinct from the suppositions of mythic thinking.

Dunstan questions the extent that he can provide an accurate account of the events of his childhood or his participation in World War I campaigns, because what he recalls is surely distinct from the 'consensually accepted reality'.

Robertson davies fifth business

One aspect of this blurred distinction between myth and history is Ramsay's lifelong preoccupation with the lives of the Saints. The fantastic nature of their stories were always grounded in actual events, but their miracles were given attention and focus based on the psychosocial attitudes and needs of the day, so that what the public wanted had a large measure of influence over what became the accepted canon.

Some readers thought that Fifth Business was intended to be semi-autobiographical.