Fifth Business

In the novel "Fifth Business", Robertson Davies successfully relates all themes of guilt, loyalty, and duty to the lives of Dunstan Ramsey, Paul Dempster, and Percy Boyd Staunton. He achieves this by showing how the characters react in different situations, and by their relationships with others in the story. Each one of them feel guilt for specific events which occurred in their lives, a certain loyalty towards something, whether it be religion, a person or …

…in character, and all dealt with their lives in different ways. Most men experienced the feeling of guilt and how it can destruct, loyalty and the commitment they had to one person, such as Dunny to Mary, and the duty that each one of them felt they had to deliver, like going to war. Their fascination with religion, magic, spirituality, and materialism all gave them the unique qualities that formed their characters throughout the novel.