"Fifth Business" by Robertson Davies

Paper Summary:

The author analyzes and evaluates characters that reveal evidence of a successful life despite their childhood instability. The paper compares the characters of Dunstan Ramsay and Paul Dempster, both had childhood instability but as adults led a successful and fulfilling life, to the character Boy Staunton, who had the perfect childhood but grew up and became an unstable adult.

From the Paper:

"Not only does Dunny suffer from a guilty conscience, but also violence and abuse. He refers to a scene where his mother is beating him, she pursued me around the kitchen, slashing me with the whip until she broke me down and I cried. She cried too, hysterically, and beat me harder, storming about my impedance, my want of respect for her, of my increasing oddity and intellectual arrogance-not that she used those words, but I do not intend to put down what she actually said-until at last her fury was spent? I can still feel that hour's misery in its perfect desolation, if I am fool enough to call it up in my mind." "

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