Fifth Business Character Analysis

Robertson Davies explores in Fifth Business the conflict between love of others and love of ourselves. The characters in the novel are not attached to only one person in physically or spiritually, because they only love themselves and just seek for their own pleasures. Ironically, people want to love and also want freedom. Human’s behaviors are in order to satisfy their own desires, that shows love is selfish. Dunstan’s love to Mary Dempster is selfless because he does not want to get anything as a return from Mary. Dunstan thinks he loved Mary Dempster when he was ten. Dustan takes care of Mary, but he is not looking for anything from Mary. “Mrs. Dempster was beginning to fill [Dunstan’s] whole life, and the stranger her conduct became, and the more the village pitied and dismissed her, the worse [Dunstan’s] obsession grew”(23, …show more content…
After Mary Dempster has sex with the tramp, Amasa Dempster thinks Mary’s behavior is immoral. He locks Mary in the room to place restrictions on her freedom, because he loves her and the possessiveness makes him wants to possess Mary. However, Amasa’s love to Mary is selfish, he only wants to occupy Mary, but he does not considers the feeling of Mary being locked in the room. By contrasting Amasa Dempster, who has the deep religions with Mary Dempster. Ironically, the real immoral person is Mary, who is being a saint to the tramp, but not Amasa who always shows his deep religious attitude. Amasa’s selfishness is based on his possessiveness to Mary who he wants to control, and does not respect to Mary and care about how she feel. In Fifth Business by Robertson Davies, it has many different loves from different people. The purpose of people giving love to others is because they want to receive something from others. That makes people love others selfishness, that shows they only love