Fifth Business

Dunstan gets an opportunity to discuss Mary Dempster with Padre Blazon on their trip to Vienna. Dunstan confides his belief that she is a saint, and explains about her three miracles. Blazon's response is that if Dunstan believes she is a saint, then to Dunstan, she is a saint. Why should he worry what anyone else thinks? Blazon also states that miracles are commonplace, not rare, and that life is a miracle by itself through the act of god.

Blazon tells Dunstan that what matters most, spiritually speaking, is an individual decision for everyone. He shows Dunstan that he needs to discover what Mary Dempster means to him in his life. He also advices him to put aside his guilt about the snowball incident, as saving him from the snowball hit could have been one of her miracles as well. Maybe Mary Dempster was meant to save him from the snowball as she saved him on the battlefield. He tells Dunstan to quit feeling guilty and to get on with figuring out what it all means; otherwise, Blazon states, Dunstan will wind up in the madhouse with his saint.

With the help of Padre Blazon, Dunstan ultimately decides that it does not matter if others share the meaning he has found in Mary Dempster, and thus Dunstan has found the value of personal meaning. He realizes that life has a different meaning for everyone. For him, life is about the search for meaning, which he comes to believe is more important than meaning itself.