The question of moral responsibility, the question that led Robertson Davies to write the Deptford trilogy, is continually before us throughout all three novels. At no point is the subjective point of view of the central characters allowed to go unchallenged. Instead, Davies has built his fictional world on an elaborate dialectical structure that allows him to test the perspectives of his protagonists by analyzing their points of view in the light of facts, the rules of reason, and universal human experience. Therefore, one can see that dialectic is not only present in the Deptford trilogy, but that it forms the moral backbone of all three novels. To recognize this is to acknowledge Davies's unquestionable achievement as a moral novelist.
