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 interest, or a duty they feel responsible for.
             Dunstan and Paul are certainly plagued by guilt throughout the story, and arguably Percy. Dunstan is very much affected by the incident with the snowball, causing the premature birth of Paul, to Mary Dempster. Dunstan feels uncontrollable amounts of guilt and even loses sleep, the urge to eat, and even thinking that he is "of the damned". Dunstan was raised very religiously, and his mother taught him to feel guilt about the smallest lapse of duty, therefore dedicating himself to help Mary financially and personally throughout her life. Paul Dempster is also overwhelmed with guilt, blaming himself for his mother's simple-mindedness and strange behaviour. The residents of Deptford were not very helpful and contributed to Paul's feelings of guilt, claiming that "the dislike so many people felt for his mother, dislike for the queer and persistently unfortunate, they attached to the unoffending son." Because Paul was old enough to analyze the situation, he came to a conclusion that because of his premature birth, his mother became crazy. Percy on the other hand, did not show any signs of taking responsibility for what happened on the winter evening birth of Paul Dempster and refused to even talk about the events that occurred on that night, for Percy "forgets" things that he would rather not discuss. When Dunstan later confronts Percy to try and get him to confess the fact that he was involved, Percy simply tell him, "I threw a snowball ...