Literature and Composition
Fifth Business (Part 4): Worksheet
1.
Account for Boy Staunton’s financial success during the Great Depression of the
1930s.
2.
Why is Orpheus Wettenhall an important factor in Dunny’s life?
3.
Describe the mythic story of Gyges and Candaules which Dunny tells to Boy.
4.
Why does Dunny come to the conclusion that his story did make Boy a bit jealous
and wary?
5.
What are Mary’s three miracles?
6.
Suggest three or four things that Dunny learns about saints from Padre Ignacio
Blazon.
7.
According to Blazon, what realization marks the beginning of wisdom?
8.
What are Blazon’s views on the following: A) Mary as a saint B) miracles
C) Christ’s second coming D) the snowball incident?
9.
Shat do you think Blazon means when he tells Dunny that he must discover his
answer “in psychological truth, not in objective truth” (177)?
10. What is the subject matter of Dunny’s second book?
11. Give three or four examples from chapter 4 which clearly indicate that the marriage
of Boy and Leola is in decline.
12. Why is Dunny so angry with Leola after she tries to commit suicide?
Literature and Composition
Fifth Business (Part 5): Worksheet
1.
What is Boy’s role in WWII?
2.
What is suspicious about Leola’s death?
3.
What is David’s reaction to the death of his mother?
4.
In what ways is Magnus Eisengrim different from typical magicians?
5.
“Liesl became less ugly after an hour or two” notes Dunny (207). What brings him
to this judgement through the course of Chapter 3?
6.
Liesl characterizes Dunny as “a man full of secrets” (217). According to her, what
has telling some of those secrets done for him?
7.
What revelation does Liesl make to Dunny regarding his affection for Mary and what
it has done to him?
8.
What discovery abruptly terminates Dunny’s infatuation with Faustina?
9.
In what way is the fight between Liesl and Dunny both comic and mythic?
10. Knowing what we know of Dunny, suggest what Liesl means when she tells Dunny
that “a whole great piece” of his life has been “unlived, denied, set aside” (226)?
11. What does Liesl mean when she tells Dunny that he is “Fifth Business” (227)?
12. If Dunny is “Fifth Business,” at this point in the novel which characters might fit into
the other operatic roles described by Liesl:
a. the prima donna, who is heroine and fool
b. the tenor, who is her lover
c. the contralto who is his rival and often a sorceress; and
d. the basso, who is villain and threatens the tenor?
Give reasons for your suggestions.
Literature and Composition
Fifth Business (Part 6): Worksheet
1.
A comment from Dunny turns Mary from “a women who was simple and nothing worse” into a
woman who is violent and requires restraints (233)?
a) What is the comment which causes this change?
b) Why does this comment have this effect?
2.
Provide two or three personality traits of Denyse Hornick.
3.
What is Denyse’s ambition for Boy?
4.
Why does Denyse dislike Dunny?
5.
Suggest what Dunny means when he suggests to Boys that he has committed “psychological
suicide” (241).
6.
Boy replies by saying that he wishes he “could get into a car and drive away from the whole
damned thing” (242). Explain Dunny’s “mythological” interpretation of this reply.
7.
What is Blazon’s conclusion with regard to Mary and sainthood?
8.
What important discovery does Dunny make in Salzburg”?
9.
Describe the details of Boy’s death.
10.
What surprises Dunny about Boy’s recollections of Deptford in Chapter 7?
11.
Explain what Eisengrim means when he suggests the he, Boy, and Dunny are “all three of the
company of the twice-borne” (162).
12.
Account for two instances in this chapter where Dunny embraces his identity as “Fifth Business.”
13.
The events of Chapter 7 actually occur before the central event of Chapter 6, Boy’s death. Suggest
what Davies has achieved by structuring the novel in this manner.
14.
When asked by a voice in the balcony “Who killed Boy Staunton,” the Brazen head answers: “He
was killed by the usual cabal…(266).
a)
Who are the five members of the “usual cabal?”
b)
Interpret, as well as you can, Which characters in the novel may make up that cabal.
c)
For each of these characters, indicate what a motive might have been.