Fifth Business Character Analysis

First Draft Robertson Davies' Fifth Business explores the nature of physical appearance in relation to religious aptitude. Through the characters Liselotte Vitzliputzli, Padre Ignacio Blazon, and the narrator and protagonist, Dunstan Ramsay, Davies shows the correlation between explicitly physically ugly characters and their spiritual and religious enlightenment. Davies draw special attention to the physical appearances of these characters in his intense descriptions of them, using extreme depictions such as Dunstan's comparison of Padre Blazon to a theatre costume (p.162) or Liesl to a “Swiss gargoyle” (p. 214), to emphasize the vitality of their anatomy. Padre Blazon and Liesl go on to play an inescapably essential role in Dunstan’s spiritual …show more content…
Though this description is graphic, Dunstan is still the least obscurely describe; a war veteran is a far cry from a gargoyle. In the same way, Dustan is the least spiritually developed. Blazon and Liesl are spiritually whole when we meet them, while one of the main focuses of the novel is Dunstan's journey towards wholeness. Davies uses to show the importance of Liesl and Blazon to Dunstan’ journey; Blazon and Liesl are at a spiritual level for which Dunstan strives and they are consequently more hideous for …show more content…
Boy is Dunstan’s doppelgänger, his inverse in every way, especially in their physical appearances and their value of religion and spirituality. Boy is handsome and successful by any measurable societal sense, yet insatiable, going on to end his own life while wrecking the lives of Leola and his children throughout the novel. Boy gradually drifts from religion until he becomes totally spiritually empty and so spiritually deprived his greatest wish is suicide. Boy never addresses his shadow, unlike Dunstan, and so he dies an incomplete, unhappy man. This contrasts Dunstan at the end of the novel who is quickly closing in on his own individuation thanks to his ugly, wise