Fifth Business: Part 3 Summary & Analysis

1. In 1919 Dunstan enters the University of Toronto as a history student. He decides to study history because, as a soldier, he was being used as a pawn in plans he did not understand by powers he did not recognize. He hopes history will give him a better understanding of the world’s affairs.

While Dunstan cuts a rather dull figure as a university student, Percy is exactly the opposite—he has changed his name from “Percy Boyd” to “Boy,” which suits him well. He is a strapping young man with a growing fortune who is well-liked by everyone he meets.

Boy worships the Prince of Wales, believing him to be the ideal man, and endeavors to look and act just like him. Boy thinks he is, like the Prince, fated for great things. He knows he wants to be richer than his father someday, and is making good progress in achieving that goal. Boy’s father, meanwhile, has noticed Boy’s increasing wealth and resents him for it.

Dunstan says he must admit that he is indebted to Boy for his financial advice. Boy manages his investments and makes Dunstan into a financially very comfortable man. Dunstan notes that he might have been able to help Boy with his spiritual life, but that Boy only sees the world in terms of external things. Boy embodies the Jazz age and the postwar period perfectly—Dunstan says that Boy is always “the quintessence of something someone else has recognized and defined.”

Boy, though he is engaged to Leola, carries on affairs with multiple women, having come out of the war with a diverse and insatiable sexual appetite. He considers himself very fond of Leola, but supposes he is not in love with her. This angers Dunstan—he does not want Leola, but it irritates him that Boy has her. He often yearns for Diana, even though he knows he would be very unhappy if he were married to her.

2. Once Dunstan earns his Masters in History from university, he gets a job teaching at Colborne College (over which the Headmaster now rules.) Dunstan goes into teaching so that he may live a certain kind of life, that he may be free to travel and explore his passions. He chooses a boys’ school because he has “never wanted to teach girls.”

He knows that from the school’s point of view, his life has been “odd and dry.” He is a good teacher, serving his students well without ever getting too attached to them. Many suspect that Dunstan—a single man working at a boys’ school, is homosexual, but Dunstan is clear that he doesn’t like boys, he simply sees himself in them. Though teaching was his professional life, he has a larger life outside of it—and it is about this life that he wishes to tell the Headmaster, so that someone will “know the truth” about him and “do him justice.”

Dunstan mentions that he has had a series of casual and rather dispassionate lovers, but that he never emotionally connects with any of them. He says it will be many years before he rediscovers love.

3. Dunstan is Boy’s best man at his wedding. Leola is a radiant bride and Boy a fetching groom, who grows more powerful in life and business by the minute, it seems. Boy and Leola have planned their honeymoon in Europe, where Dunstan is also traveling for the summer. On the ship, Dunstan is horrified to see that Boy and Leola are riding on the same voyage, in first class. Boy comes down to talk to him, rambling about all the fine people up in first class, including a priest from a popular new church in New York who is especially impressive. He also laments that Leola is not as worldly as she ought to be. Dunstan later wonders if this popular new preacher knew the Bible as well as he, Dunstan, did.

Dunstan and the Stauntons part ways when the ship docks. Dunstan goes back to the battlefields, hoping to get a sense of the landscape where he was wounded, but does not recognize anything. He asks around about the statue of the Madonna, but has no luck locating it.

His search for the Madonna leads him to travel around studying many examples of Renaissance art. He develops an enthusiasm for the subject, and tours Europe learning more and more about art and religion. He notes that the Presbyterianism of his childhood insulated him against faith, and that now he is rediscovering his love and enthusiasm for religious studies.

He learns quickly, and soon becomes interested in the stories of saints, and embarks on a kind of amateur career in hagiology (the study of the lives of saints). These stories again remind him of Arabian Nights, and he says that in saints he has found a happiness that will “endure.”

5. Back at school, Dunstan’s teaching duties keep him busy. Boy is also beginning a kind of career in education, only he is educating his wife. He has proven himself to be a brilliant businessman, and is trying to make Leola into the kind of wife a wealthy businessman should have—elegant, educated, and refined. The Jazz age has ended, and now Boy thinks it is time to settle down and be “Young Marrieds” together. Within a year their son David is born.

5. Boy’s father never visits, in part because Boy has converted to Anglicanism, and Dr. Staunton refuses to see him on religious grounds. Similarly, Boy worries about Dunstan and his interest in saints—Dunstan cannot seem to stop talking about them. Boy points out that Saints are okay for Catholics, but that Protestants should be more “evolved” than that. Dunstan responds by talking about saints even more, just to irritate Boy. Boy tells him he should stop teaching and make something of himself, but Dunstan knows he is not ambitious like Boy—he does not want to be in charge of people. He is happy to let fate handle his life.

And it does: one day the head of a Mission in Toronto is brought into school to talk to the boys about charity: his name is Joel Surgeoner, and he makes a speech about the redemptive powers of God. During this speech, he calls out Dunstan for appearing skeptical. Dunstan should perhaps feel embarrassed but he does not—for he recognizes Joel as the tramp who slept with Mary many years ago.

Dunstan goes to the Mission that very night. He confronts Joel about his speech and about his accusation levied at Dunstan. Joel admits that it’s simply a trick—it makes he audience think he can see everything, and their faith in him might increase their faith in God, so he does it.

Dunstan eventually tells Joel they have met before, and asks him about that might with Mary. Joel explains he was in a miserable state, and was being asked to perform sexual favors for other tramps in return for food. On a particularly dejected night, he came across Mary Dempster, and tried to have his way with her. She asked him why he was being so rough, and this made him cry. She comforted him and said she wanted to help. He told her he still wanted her and she agreed. The next day when he was run out of town, he felt he had been delivered. He says Mary had been a blessed saint, and that their encounter had been a miracle.

Dunstan goes back to Deptford to ask about Mary’s whereabouts. Milo tells him she’s living with her aunt, Bertha Shanklin, in Weston. Then Dunstan goes to see the Catholic priest, Father Regan, to ask about Mary’s potential sainthood. He tells him he thinks he may have found a saint, but Father Regan thinks this is ludicrous. He tells Dunstan that a fool-saint is someone who seems full of holiness but is too much a fool and his life comes to nothing, because virtue tainted with madness is not virtue at all. Dunstan goes back to Toronto knowing that Father Regan has made good points, but nevertheless decides to go to Weston a couple of weeks later.

8. Mary Dempster is now 40 but looks younger than her age. Bertha is a small old woman with gentle manners. Bertha tells him that Mary is in no real condition to have visitors, but Dunstan wins her over with his kind words about Mary and her influence on his life. Bertha tells him that Mary remembers little of her life is Deptford, only that she had been tied up and that Paul had disappeared. She remembers Amasa praying to God about Mary ruining his life—she remembers that Amasa died praying.

8. The following spring, in 1929, Dunstan gets a call from Boy, who tells him to sell certain stocks immediately. When the market crashes, Dunstan’s small fortune is spared, and he owes this success completely to Boy. But Dunstan can hardly think of money, as he is too preoccupied with his upcoming summer travels through Europe. He is particularly interested in a little-studied bearded female saint called “Uncumber.” He has some ideas about Uncumber’s history, and her existence in various religious accounts.

Dunstan hunts for traces of Uncumber in remote villages across Europe. In one small town his visit corresponds with the visit of a circus. Dunstan recognizes the man performing card tricks in the circus as Paul Dempster. Dunstan recognizes his dexterous hands immediately. After the show, he approaches Paul, who has grown into a man and speaks several languages fluently. Paul’s stage name is Faustus Legrand. He is not keen to speak with Dunstan, but slowly Dunstan wins him over, as well as the rest of the crew, by buying several rounds of drinks for all of them at a local pub.

The bearded lady of the circus takes a special liking to Dunstan after he tells her about the saint Uncumber. She confides in him that the circus master, Le Solitaire, had likely carried on a sexual relationship with Paul when he was a boy, and that now he can’t stand to be apart from him. Dunstan finally asks Paul if he may tell Mary that he is alive and well; Paul says he does not mean to see her, so telling her of his whereabouts will do no good. He explains that he was told over and over that his birth drove his mother mad, and that he does not wish to revisit the sadness of his past. The next morning, when Dunstan rises to continue his search for Uncumber, he notices that his pocketbook has been stolen, and guesses that Paul is the culprit.