Summary and Analysis of Fifth Buisness

Fifth Buisness by Robertson Davies, is a very complicated novel filled with many deeper meanings. This story is about the life of Dunstan Ramsey. Dunstan's most important early event is when he dodges a snowball, and this snowball ends up hitting Mary Dempster in the back and causes her to have her child prematurely and essentially go insane. Mary is the wife of the reverend, a true good man. The child Paul is born. As Dunny grows up in the library, he babysits and play with Paul and teaches him magic and different tricks. Dunny always feels a weird attraction for Mary and eventually ends up taking care of her when she goes insane and has no one left. He thinks of her as a saint, his saint. This eventually leads to his pursuit of saints. He does thorough research on saints and write many books about this topic while traveling the world to many various monasteries. Meanwhile, the kid who threw the snowball, Boy Stanton, ends up marrying the prettiest girl in the town, Leola, whom Dunny once had a relationship with, and becomes filthy rich. Boy becomes the ultimate politician and buisnessman, always making the right decisions and looking perfect in public. Dunny goes through many things, he is awarded the V.C. by the King of England, the highest honor awarded to a soldier, for something that he feels that was not a very big deal. Dunny also meets a great girl and almost marries until finally deciding that he was not actually in love. However, he thinks of her constantly as what he wish he wanted. Later on, Dunny meets Paul, who has now become a world famous magician but refuses to take care of his mother since he has run away from home. He also meets Liesl who he learns a lot from, and who essentially is his intellectual equal, which is very rare. Throughout all of these experiences, he is finally brought to the conclusion that he is the fifth buisness, the side actor in everyone's story without a real story of his own. This is difficult for him because he has lived his whole life thinking very selfishly thinking that everything is because or for him only to realize that he has simply been the side character in many people's lives without having a true story of his own.
This leads us to the meaning that we are all side actors in other people's lives and therefore everything we do affects other people whether directly or indirectly.