Fifth Business Essay

There are multiple similarities between Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken” and Robertson Davies’ Fifth Business. The theme of taking a road that is less common is present in both texts. The narrator in “The Road Not Taken” had chosen a path “… less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.” (Frost 19-20). Likewise, Dunstan also took the less common road when he decided to stay by Mrs. Dempster’s side even while everyone else had abandoned and shamed her for being simple. Taking “… the

Hamlet by William Shakespeare and the novel Fifth Business by Robertson Davies, the secondary characters Horatio and Dunstan Ramsay respectively both play a crucial role in the fulfillment of “Fifth Business”. According to Davies, Fifth Business are "those roles which, being neither those of Hero nor Heroine, Confidante nor Villain, but which were nonetheless essential to bring about the Recognition or the denouement” (Davies, Preface). Fifth Business represents a person who is paradoxically a “supporting

T.s- There is a little bit of darkness in everyone, but if you accept it and learn from it, you can grow, but if you repress it and never deal with it; then there will be severe consequences. T- By examining Robertson Davies’ novel, Fifth Business, one can see that Dunstan’s perspective of the snowball incident, Boy’s encounter in the gravel pit, and Willie’s death, demonstrate Dunstan’s struggle with the psychological truth behind literal events, resulting in Boy and Dunstan’s dark desires to reveal

In the novel Fifth Business, women played an important role that impacted Dunstan emotionally and spiritually. From a young age, Dunstan’s mother, Mrs. Ramsay, placed fear and isolation in his heart and was the reason he became emotionally distanced from women. He turned towards Mrs. Dempster as she provided him the love and affection that he wasn’t able to receive from his mother. She also sparked his interest in hagiography and to pursue his study in inner spirituality. As he comes of age and meets

emotions can often get in the way of people making rational decisions. As a result of that, the decisions made can generally lead to changing and shaping the outcome of more than one person’s future in either a positive or negative way. In the novel, Fifth Business, the concept of emotions playing a role in one’s future are principally explored. Purposely, Robertson Davies illustrates how characters’ pressing guilt and absence of guilt largely contribute in manipulating the outcome of future events. One

Robertson Davies, a Canadian author of the 1970s novel Fifth business. Focuses on a character named Dunstan Ramsay. Dunstan along with John proctor a character of the play The Crucible, share similarities between their character. Regret is a feeling that both John and Dunstan share. John feels regret over his affair and Dunstan regrets his actions which lead to the injury of Mary Dempster. Self discovery is another commonality between the two characters John seeks his moral compass and Dunstan searches

Our actions and choices are capable of causing ripples in the 'ponds ' of other 's realities, even those largely disconnected from our own. These ripples shape a person 's impression of individuality and of their Self. In Robertson Davies’ ‘Fifth Business’, even the minor characters that Dunstan Ramsay encounters, as well as his various experiences have different degrees of impact on his process of Individuation. Throughout the novel, Dunstan is self-reflective and becomes aware not only of how

luminous colors that seem to change when seen from different angles. The novel Fifth Business has many angles in which one can approach it. One of these is Marxism, the origins of Marxism come from Karl Marx who was a philosopher that created a definition of what is a perfect socialist society. This perfection would make both the bourgeoisie and the proletariat equal, this is not the case in Robertson Davies novel Fifth Business. Percy is a character in which is all that Marx views oppose. Elements of

can have different effects depending on the subject of the emotion. Similarly, in both the novel Fifth Business and the play Hamlet, guilt plays an important role in the protagonists’, antagonists’, and character foils’ lives’, but as all emotions are, comes from different sources and affects the characters in different ways. Firstly, the feeling of wrongdoing affects the character

the character who brought recognition to the story of Hamlet the young prince is credited to his best friend Horatio. Horatio was the muted, loyal and scholarly companion of Hamlet, mainly viewed throughout the play as the sidekick/helper. In Fifth Business, Dunstan was the narrator of a story that showed exclusive, 3rd person perspectives of the rich, famous and scandalous Boy Staunton. Although the story started off with heavy emphasis on Dunstan’s own life, it became evident halfway through the