Perplexity And Rebirth

Fifth Business(1970)is the representative work of a famous Canadian novelist Robertson Davies(1913-1995)in the mid-20 th century.The novel takes the First World War as the ethical background,truly reflecting the social style and spiritual crisis of a specific historical era in Canada.It illustrates an ethical and moral story that a snowball accident has significant impacts on Ramsay and Boy.The thesis applies the theory of Ethical Literary Criticism to explore the ethical predicaments and the extended ethical crises that Ramsay and Boy fall into due to an accident event,to study the process of the two protagonists from perplexity to rebirth,and to elaborate the unique ethical value presented in Fifth Business.Combining the social background and ethical environment at a certain context,the thesis exposes the chaotic order of family ethics and interpersonal ethics,discusses the ethical dilemmas and ethical identity crisis faced by Ramsay and Boy under the specific ethical environments.Furthermore,it criticizes the social hypocrisy and emptiness as well as the distortion and alienation of human nature caused by the emptiness of the spiritual world and the pursuit of material desires.In a specific ethical environment,characters in literary works inevitably encounter with complex ethical predicaments and ethical selections.The thesis focuses on the analysis of the ideological game between Ramsay and Boy under the influence of the sphinx factor and the final ethical selections made.Their different choices reflect the conflict between altruism and egoism,the opposition between good and evil and the collision between idealism and materialism.They made ethical selections in the process of moral condemnation and self pursuit in order to carry out the ethical redemption and get rebirth eventually.In the end,the thesis profoundly elucidates the metaphorical connotation of several symbols contained in Fifth Business and unveils the ethical implications so as to highlight the moral value and pedagogical significance therein.As a writer with a strong sense of morality and social responsibility,Robertson Davies not only pays attention to the living environment of human,but also to practical ethical issues such as the social identity,responsibility and human nature of entire society.The ethical connotation in Fifth Business has moral and educational value for building a harmonious society,reflecting Davies’ examination of human themselves,calls for responsibility and pursuit of virtuous human nature.