FIFTH BUSINESS: SECTION THREE

MY FOOL SAINT

Title

Focus turns to religion and its various permutations

Religion:

Dunny is beginning to recognize its psychological weight

This section reveals three approaches to the subject

The Reverend George Maldon Leadbeater “a great prophet from a fashionable New York

church” (119) “He makes Christianity make sense for the first

time… I mean, Christ was really a very distinguished person,, a Prince of the House of David, a poet and an intellectual”

“Of course He was a carpenter… not making cowsheds, I’ll bet. Undoubtedly a designer and a manufacturer, in terms of those days. Otherwise, how did he make his connections? You know, when He was travelling around, staying with all kinds of rich and influential people as an honoured guest—obviously He wasn’t just bumming his way through Palestine (119)

Leadbeater

Uses religion as a tool to justify living the way he wants to live

This approach is fundamentally immature

It attracts Boy (119)

Boy Name change – the

eternal child “He was now Boy

Staunton and it suited him admirably” (109)

“he was Boy Staunton because he summed up in himself so much of the glory of youth in the post-war period” (109)

Boy, cont’d. Extra-marital affairs construct a moral code that affirms his

behaviour “He had no moral responsibility toward them…Though he

might ‘fall’ for one of them for a few weeks… he was not ‘in love’ with her, as he was with Leola” (114)

Discards the spiritual: “You see how it was: to him the reality of life lay in external things, wheras for me the only reality was of the spirit—of the mind” (112)

Role model: The Prince of Wales “This mould for his outward man, was no one less than

Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David, the Prince of Wales…How would such a dashing youth ever settle himself to the duties of kingship?... Just the very model for Boy Staunton, who saw himself in similar terms” (110)

Surgeoner’s Approach

Draws people towards “goodness” through the art of well-constructed stories

Stories are psychologically true, may not be literally true

Joel Surgeoner: “I expect them to believe the spirit of the story,”

he said, “and I know from experience what kind of story they like. You educated people, you have a craze for what you call truth, by which you mean police-court facts. These people get their noses rubbed in such facts all day and every day, and they don't want to hear them from me.”

“So you provide romance,” I said. “I provide something that strengthens faith, Mr.

Ramsay, as well as I can” (131-2)

Surgeoner’s Effect on Dunny This is the earliest clear indication of Dunny’s

understanding of the two realities: psychological truth and objective literal truth

Surgeoner is the first “wise old man” in Dunny’s life

Presentation 10 : Conversion and Atheism

Two Realities: (131) verifiable fact vs. universal truth (the “spirit

of the story”)

(132) accomplishing good through art – the listeners need the art as much as the preacher does

(134-135) is Mary D. a “hoor” as the town believed or a “saint” as Surgeoner believes? She saved him: “It was her that turned me to God” (133) --a miracle?

“When I look back now I wonder that it wasn't all over with me that moment. But it wasn't. No, it was glory come into my life. It was as if I had gone right down into Hell and through the worst of the fire, and come up on a clear, pure pool where I could wash and be clean” (134)-- a psychological quest (remember hero's journey)

“He worked through that woman, and she is a blessed saint, for what she did for me—I mean it as I say—it was a miracle” (135)

Dunny changes at this moment – begins to understand that facts are not the only or even the most important quarry of the historian

goes to Father Reagan (Catholic priest in Deptford) for confirmation –rejects his understanding of saints (Catholic Church determines who is in and who is not): “Be content with the facts you have, or think you have, and don't push anything too far—or you might get a little bit strange yourself” (138)

Mary D., Saints, and Myth

Dunny starts his quest with a fact-finding mission (a bit wrong-headed here perhaps; he is just beginning to understand)

He goes to see Mary, does not find out who she is, but rather begins to understand who he is in relation to her (her friend, eventually her caretaker)

Dunny goes on a saint hunt – leads to saint Uncumber

(142) Who is Uncumber? Facts vs. Myth

What is more important about her? To know the facts about her, or to know that a girl in a bad spot because of her parents’ choice of husband for her has a source of hope, and an inspiration for soldiering on?

UncumberFeminine figure

with a beard (masculine

characteristics)

Dunny’s search to balance his feminine and masculine polarities?

Chance plays a role in Dunny’s life: he reconnects with Paul Dempster

Presentation 11 : Circuses