Fifth Business Study Questions & Topics for Discussion

Fifth Business Key Questions

In 1968, Robertson Davies said in a dialogue with Gordon Roper that "life has a strong mythic and fairy tale quality. And people don't recognize that they are living out myths or mythic patterns or archetypal situations." This idea would inform his next novel Fifth Business, which was published two years later. Any serious discussion of Fifth Business must deal with the mythic patterns that Dunstan Ramsay is seeking to understand in his own life and the different archetypes that different characters represent. A knowledge of C. G. Jung is helpful to a full understanding, but Fifth Business may be read and enjoyed without a knowledge of Jungian psychology.

Another issue that one might want to consider is Davies's use of a first-person narrator. Normally a narrator is fallible in that his point of view is limited and his knowledge may well be flawed or incomplete. One might...
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