Incidents that occur in one's childhood tend to affect them possibly for the rest of the rest of their life. This applies to the novel "Fifth Business" and the characters Dunstan Ramsey and Boy Staunton. Throughout the lives of these characters Dunstan lives in the shadow of Boy due to feelings of guilt and responsibility as a result of one winter evening in the town of Deptford.
As Boy and Dunny grew up together they were each others best friends and also worst enemies, but they were on basically equal terms in their childish trials of life. This remained to be true until that winter…