Fifth Business 315even though he was the intended victim, not the
one who threw the snowball. Ramsay becomes a
schoolteacher and also an expert on hagiology (the
study of saints), publishing 10 books in this area.
It is through his work on saints and his friendship
with a female con artist that he finally comes to an
understanding of his own nature.
The novel’s form is a letter, written by Ramsay
after he retires, that serves as his autobiography. In it,
he tells his own story and those of Mary Dempster,
the woman who was injured by the snowball; her
son, to whom she gave premature birth because of
the injury; and Percy Staunton, the town bully who
threw the snowball and becomes one of the most
wealthy and influential men in Canada.
Fifth Business is 40th on the American Modern
Library list of the 20th century’s 100 best novels. It
is Davies’s best-known novel.
Susan R. Bowers
Guilt in Fifth Business
Guilt shapes the entire life of Dunstan Ramsay.
He is plagued by it from the moment the snowball
aimed at him by the town bully instead hits the
pregnant Mary Dempster, precipitating the prema-
ture birth of her son and her descent into mental
illness. Dunstan blames himself because he had
dodged in front of Mrs. Dempster and her husband
to escape being hit himself.
No one else knows who threw the snowball,
which had a rock, which Dunstan uses as a paper-
weight throughout his life, inside. The bully, Percy
Staunton, refuses to acknowledge culpability and
threatens Dunstan with dire consequences if he tells.
Thus, Dunstan at age 10 is left alone with his guilt
to conjure horrific images of being tortured in hell
as one of the damned. He believes so fervently that
some dreadful fate will overtake him if his role in
the incident should become known that the truth
does not surface for 50 years.
Dunstan’s efforts to expiate his guilt by helping
the Dempsters invite mockery from his peers and
isolate him from his own world. When he teaches
magic to Paul, the Dempster child, Paul’s Baptist
minister father banishes him from their home. But
when Mrs. Dempster’s habit of wandering culmi-
nates in her disappearance, Dunstan is with the
search party who find her in the town gravel pit,
having sex with a hobo because, she says, “He was
very civil” and “wanted it so badly.” Her act so hor-
rifies the townsfolk that Dunstan’s mother forbids
him from ever seeing Mrs. Dempster. The Reverend
Dempster ties his wife with a rope to keep her from
wandering away. Dunstan secretly visits, however,
and comes to see their relationship as “the tap root
that fed [his] life.”
Dunstan’s obsession with Mrs. Dempster never
ceases: he ultimately takes over her care (her hus-
band has long since abandoned her) and visits her
every week after he becomes a teacher in a private
boys’ school. He also maintains a relationship with
Percy “Boy” Staunton, who makes a fortune in sugar
and rises to prominence in Canadian politics. But
Dunstan’s guilt is refreshed periodically. He feels
new guilt, for instance, when Paul runs away at an
early age to join a traveling circus as a magician
since Dunstan had initiated Paul’s fascination with
magic. Fifty years later, he convinces himself that
something he has told Mrs. Dempster leads to her
death. Even after she is dead, the guilt continues:
He begs God’s forgiveness because “I had not been
loving enough, or wise enough, or generous enough
in my dealings with her.”
Guilt causes Dunstan to live a life on the side-
lines, although he teaches for 45 years and writes
10 books. His isolation is occasioned partly by the
secrecy that guilt fosters, as well as by the time and
energy required to take care of Mrs. Dempster. The
psychological damage is so significant that he can-
not engage fully in relationships until forced as a
60-year-old man to confess his guilty secret.
Thus, Fifth Business raises important questions
about Dunstan’s guilt as well as guilt in general.
Most important is the question of whether Dunstan
should have felt guilt at all. After all, it is instinctual
to get out of the way of danger; moreover, a 10-year-
old boy could not have foreseen that he would
put someone else in harm’s way. Finally, a simple
snowball is not usually deadly; Dunstan could not
have known that Percy had packed the snow around
a piece of granite. Another question is whether
the town’s repressive atmosphere concerning sexual
matters, including childbirth, combined with young