Fifth Business by Robertson Davies :: Fifth business robertson davies Essays

Fifth Business by Robertson DaviesIn Robertson Davies saucy Fifth Business, the author uses the eventsthat occurred in Deptford as a Canadian in allusion to happen upon character identity.Three characters in the novel from Deptford boy Staunton, Dunstan Ramsey andPaul Dempster, bury Deptford to embark on a peeled identity to rid of their direfulpast. The three main characters of the novel, all of whom to some extent try to hop extinct their small townsfolkship background, change their identity to change state people ofconsequence. All in some way take on a rising identity. Imbedded in thistransformation is the assumption that ones original self, especially onessmall town origins, must be discarded before one can become significant in theworld.Firstly, Paul Dempster grows up as an outcast in Deptford, his fussssimpleness leading the tight social world of the town to cast out his wholefamily and forces Paul to leave the town and compel a rising image for himself.Paul run s away to the circus in his early teens because of the affable abuse hetook from the town because of his mothers incident with the tramp. Dunstablecomments, Paul was not a village favorite, and the dislike so many people feltfor his mother - dislike for the queer and persistently unfortunate - theyattached to the unoffending son, (Davies 40) illustrates how the town treatedPaul because of his mothers actions. Paul leaves his past because of theactions displaced by his mother and the guiltiness he feels because his birth waswhat robbed her of her sanity, (Davies 260) explains why Paul left Deptford.However, while boy merely tries to ignore his Deptford past, Paul tries tocreate a completely new one and Paul asks Dunstan to write an memoir thatin general impairment that he was to be a electric shaver of the Baltic vastness, rearedperhaps by gnomelike Lapps after the death of his explorer parents, who wereprobably Russians of high birth. (Davies 231). The scenery of thisautobiogr aphy seems significantly Canadian, but Paul does not want his book to play his past life in Deptford. Therefore, Paul Dempster is a troubledchild because of his mothers actions in Deptford which in turn force Paul toleave Deptford and to create a new identity for himself.Secondly, Dunstable Ramsey is haunted by the guilt of bloody shame Dempster overhis entire life and he must create a new identity for himself. After a rock hashit bloody shame in the head (in a snowball thrown by Boy Staunton meant for Ramsay),and her preacher husband is crying over her, young Ramsays only scene is that