Fifth Business Essay

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Fifth Business Essay Outline June 5, 2009 Prompt #3: Show that a conflict based on morals or values is used to develop a central theme in Fifth Business? Introduction Theme: Repressing one’s true feelings and values during childhood results in loneliness and confusion of one’s true self. Thesis: Throughout Fifth Business, Dunstan Ramsey fails in understanding and accepting his true values and self, which develops as a consequence of the conflicting values between himself and the people whom he is exposed to during his youth. Directional Statement: Conflicted between his own values and those of his friend Boy, his mother and the Deptford society, Dunstan experiences a conflict of values within himself throughout his life. Body paragraph #1 Topic sentence: Because of Dunstan and friend Boy's opposing views of the Dempster family during their childhood, Dunstan is faced with a lifetime of uncertainty concerning the meaning of his relationship with Mary Dempster. Support: 1. “I was contrite and guilty, for I knew that the snowball had been meant for me” (p.3) 2. “I thought in a flash it must be the crowned woman in Revelation – she who had the moon beneath her feet and was menaced by the Red Dragon. But what hit me worse than the blow of the shrapnel was that the face was Mrs. Dempster’s face” (p.74) 3. “…and then I wept. I had not done such a thing since my mother had beaten me so many years before…and it frightened and hurt me” (p.249) Explanations: 1. Because Boy is unable to experience the same sense of culpability from the snowball incident, Dunstan’s own feelings of guilt are intensified. And although he wishes to reveal that it was him and Boy who caused the premature birth of Mrs. Dempster’s son, he is unable to do this because of threats from Boy, and is therefore conflicted between staying true to what he feels
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