Fifth Business | Style

Fifth Business Style

Point of View

Fifth Business employs the conceit of being a narrative written for an audience of one, specifically, the Headmaster of the Colborne College for Boys. The main character and narrator, Dunstan Ramsey, has recently retired from a forty-plus-year career as a teacher at Colborne. The novel is crafted as if it were Dunstan's response to a rather condescending article written about his teaching career upon the occasion of his retirement. With Fifth Business, Dunstan intends to set the record straight for his former boss, the Headmaster, by revealing, at long last, his side of the story. In addition, the narrator promises his audience, the Headmaster, that he will endeavor to chronicle his life objectively, withholding nothing. This conceit, employed by author Robertson Davies, is a clever way of intriguing the reader, for it gives the story, from the very beginning, the feel of a salacious, clandestine memoir. Dunstan's promise to reveal...
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