A Prayer for Owen Meany

“‘He wants you to give them back,’ Dan Needham said […] Of course that’s what Owen expected of me: he gave me his baseball cards to show me how sorry he was about the accident, and how much he was hurting, too—because Owen had loved my mother almost as much as I did, I was sure, and to give me all his cards was his way of saying that he loved me enough to trust me with his famous collection. But, naturally, he wanted all the cards back!”

John, as an adult, spends much of the narrative revisiting Owen’s actions in order to determine their meaning. Owen often communicates via actions, rather than words, and the act of giving his baseball cards to John after Tabby dies is a key example. John recognizes in the moment that Owen cannot articulate his guilt and grief. In returning the baseball cards to Owen, John further conveys that he does not hold Owen responsible for his mother’s death and their friendship thus remains intact.

“I looked at Owen’s departing image with wonder: he had managed to orchestrate my mourning on the evening of my mother’s funeral. And, like my armadillo’s claws, he’d taken what he wanted—in this case, my mother’s double, her shy dressmaker’s dummy in that unloved dress. Later, I thought that Owen must have known the dummy was important; he must have foreseen that even the unloved dress would have a use—that it had a purpose.”

Here John refers to Owen’s taking the dressmaker’s dummy out of Dan’s house and keeping it for himself. John rarely understands the reason for Owen’s actions in the moment—it is only in retrospect that they gain clarity and significance. Owen’s seemingly fortuitous act of keeping the dress becomes important later when he is able to use it to unlock secrets of Tabby’s past. John’s assessment of this, however, in retrospect suggests Owen possesses a type of ability to recognize that objects will become valuable in the future.

“‘[Owen] thinks his voice is for a purpose; that there’s a reason for his voice being like that,’ I said.

‘What reason?’ my grandmother asked. […]

‘Owen thinks his voice comes from God,’ I said quietly.”

This is the first reference to Owen regarding himself as an “instrument of God,” as he will later describe it. Though his voice strikes most people as strange—and, in some cases, even disturbing—Owen embraces its uniqueness as a sign he has been singled out by God. Later, Owen’s voice will take on further metaphorical significance when he writes a column in the Gravesend Academy newspaper called “The Voice.”

“How I wanted to talk to [Owen] now! What would he think of my grandmother’s suggestion that he had foreseen Lydia’s death? And would he be relieved to learn that Death didn’t have a plan to come for him? Would he believe it? I knew he would be deeply disappointed if he missed seeing Lydia. And I wanted to tell him about my discovery—while watching the theater audience—that I believed I could, by this means, actually remember the faces in the audience at what Owen called that FATED baseball game. What would Owen Meany say about my sudden inspiration: that it had been my actual father whom my mother was waving to, the split second before the ball hit her? In the world of what the Rev. Lewis Merrill called ‘visions,’ what would Owen make of that one?”

John is rattled by Owen’s insistence that the headstone in the play was transcribed with Owen’s own name and date of death. John recognizes Owen’s fierce belief that many things are signs from God and wants very much to hear Owen’s assessment of both Lydia’s sudden death and of John’s sudden hypothesis about his father. Because Owen has always insisted that John’s father will one day reveal himself to John, John himself learns to pay attention to the possible signs of such a revelation. Further, the desire to talk to Owen will be one John experiences frequently as an adult after Owen’s death. To consider what Owen “would have said” is a comfort to John.

“Granite is a dense, heavy stone; it weighs close to two hundred pounds per cubic foot. Ironically—even though they worked with the diamond wheel—most of the sawyers had all their fingers, but none of the quarrymen had all their fingers; only Mr. Meany had all his.

‘I’LL KEEP ALL MINE, TOO,’ Owen said, ‘YOU’VE GOT TO BE MORE THAN QUICK, YOU’VE GOT TO FEEL WHEN THE ROCK’S GOING TO MOVE BEFORE IT MOVES—YOU’VE GOT TO MOVE BEFORE THE ROCK MOVES.’”

The reference to losing fingers via the diamond wheel in the Meanys’ monument shop foreshadows Owen’s removal of John’s trigger finger years later. Because John works in the shop, the lost finger is a believable accident. This quote demonstrates, too, that Owen is skillful enough to remove only John’s finger and to do no further damage. His insistence that he will keep all of his fingers speaks to his knowledge of the future and of how he will die.

“The editorial and subsequent weekly essays that Owen published in The Grave were ascribed not to Owen Meany by name, but to ‘The Voice’; and the text was printed in uniform upper-case letters. ‘I’M ALWAYS GOING TO BE PUBLISHED IN CAPITALS,’ Owen explained to Dan and me, ‘BECAUSE IT WILL INSTANTLY GRAB THE READER’S ATTENTION, ESPECIALLY AFTER ‘THE VOICE’ GETS TO BE A KIND OF INSTITUTION.’”

This passage reveals why Irving has portrayed all of Owen Meany’s dialogue in capital letters. That the sound of Owen’s voice is unique—coupled with his small size—immediately sets him apart from his peers. Here, Irving plays with the notion of Owen’s literal voice by making it synonymous with the figurative meaning of “to voice,” as in “to express an opinion.” Owen’s column does just that as he uses it as a platform to challenge policies and norms at Gravesend Academy. Further, that Owen predicts that the column will become an “institution” is in keeping with his ability to foresee his future and the theme of Destiny and Human Agency.

“Pastor Merrill preached his doubt-is-the-essence-of-and-not-the-opposite-of-faith philosophy; it was a point of view that interested Owen more than it had once interested him. The apparent secret was ‘belief without miracles’; a faith that needed a miracle was not a faith at all. Don’t ask for proof—that was Mr. Merrill’s routine message.

‘BUT EVERYONE NEEDS A LITTLE PROOF,’ said Owen Meany.

‘Faith itself is a miracle, Owen,’ said Pastor Merrill. ‘The first miracle that I believe in is my own faith itself.’”

Owen’s and Pastor Merrill’s differing theological beliefs define their relationship and connect directly to the theme of Religious Faith and Doubt. Owen’s insistence that miraculous events occur in the present day stems from his certainty that he has been specially chosen by God. Later, Pastor Merrill, too, will come to accept the importance of miracles, but for the wrong reasons (according to John).

“Owen and I were nineteen-year-old seniors at Gravesend Academy—at least a year older than the other members of our class—when Owen told me, point blank, what he had expressed to me, symbolically, when he was eleven and had mutilated my armadillo.

‘GOD HAS TAKEN YOUR MOTHER,’ he said to me, when I was complaining about practicing the shot; I thought he would never slam-dunk the ball in under four seconds, and I was bored with all our trying. ‘MY HANDS WERE THE INSTRUMENT,’ he said. ‘GOD HAS TAKEN MY HANDS. I AM GOD’S INSTRUMENT.’”

Owen’s belief that he is God’s instrument (important in shaping the theme of Religious Faith and Doubt) shapes the actions he takes. He is determined that his life will unfold as God wants it to, further contributing to the theme of destiny and human agency. John is unsurprised by Owen’s assertion that he is unique, though John will spend much of his young adult life doubting the degree to which this is true. It is not until after Owen has died—after applying the oft-practiced basketball shot to move a grenade, as Owen predicted—that John will agree with Owen that he is indeed God’s instrument. This reiterates Owen’s previous assertion that “everyone needs a little proof” (314).

“‘WE HAVE A GENERATION OF PEOPLE WHO ARE ANGRY TO LOOK FORWARD TO,’ Owen said. ‘AND MAYBE TWO GENERATIONS OF PEOPLE WHO DON’T GIVE A SHIT,’ he added.

‘How do you know?’ I asked him.

‘I DON’T KNOW HOW I KNOW,’ said Owen Meany. ‘I JUST KNOW THAT I KNOW,’ he said.”

Owen frequently dispenses bits of insight to John in a way that suggests Owen has a wisdom and foresight that others do not. Indeed, he is certain that he can predict the future. This fortuitousness makes Owen a prophetic figure and John marvels in how, decades after his death, Owen proved to be right in many ways.

“This [diary] entry strikes me as important; it is dated January 1, 1962 and it reads as follows:

I know three things. I know that my voice doesn’t change, and I know when I’m going to die. I wish I knew why my voice never changes, I wish I knew how I was going to die; but God has allowed me to know more than most people know—so I’m not complaining. The third thing I know is that I am God’s instrument; I have faith that God will let me know what I’m supposed to do, and when I’m supposed to do it. Happy New Year!”

After Owen’s death, John reads the diary entries Owen recorded in which he assessed his recurring dream. Placed throughout the novel, these entries serve to foreshadow the ending and Owen’s inevitable death. This entry speaks directly to the theme of religious faith and doubt, as Owen trusts that his death is part of a divine plan, as well as to the theme of destiny and human agency. By the end of the novel, readers are able to determine the importance of several of the details in Owen’s dream. For instance, because of his childlike voice, the Vietnamese children trust and listen to him, which saves their lives.

“As always, with Owen Meany, there was the necessary consideration of the symbols involved. He had removed Mary Magdalene’s arms, above the elbows, so that her gesture of beseeching the assembled audience would seem all the more an act of supplication—and all the more helpless. Dan and I both knew that Owen suffered from an obsession with armlessness—this was Watahantowet’s familiar totem, this was what Owen had done to my armadillo. My mother’s dressmaker’s dummy was armless, too.”

While John recognizes that Owen’s removal of the arms from the Mary Magdalene status is important, he does not, at this point, have the information needed to fully comprehend the act’s significance. It is only when Owen dies by a grenade blast that severs both of his arms and causes him to bleed to death that the act’s meaning is made fully clear. Likewise, Owen removing the armadillo’s claws parallels the removal of John’s index finger. These, like many events in the book, are only fully understood in retrospect; thus, the structure of the novel facilitates this as an adult John recounts the past events.

“When we finished the hymn, the Rev. Mr. Merrill said: ‘Let us pray. Let us pray for Owen Meany,’ he said.

It was very quiet in The Great Hall, and although our heads were bowed, our eyes were on the headmaster. We waited for Mr. Merrill to begin. Perhaps he was trying to begin, I thought; then I realized that—awkward as ever—he had meant for us to pray for Owen. What he’d meant was that we were to offer our silent prayers for Owen Meany; and as the silence went on, and on, it became clear that the Rev. Lewis Merrill had no intention of hurrying us. He was not a brave man, I thought, but he was trying to be brave. On and on, we prayed and prayed; and if I had known about Owen’s dream, I would have prayed much harder.”

This scene is the plot point from which the novel’s title is derived. This is the moment when Owen’s expulsion from Gravesend Academy is made certain; the whole of the academy, however, including the students, faculty, and staff, stand with Owen and oppose the headmaster’s insistence on his expulsion. This is evident in the long silence that Rev. Merrill demands and in which he instructs the attendees at the morning meeting to pray for Owen. While this suggests Rev. Merrill is an ally of Owen’s, John later regards his decision not to pray out loud for Owen himself as evidence that Rev. Merrill has lost his faith. The title itself is symbolic as, John’s retelling of Owen’s life is a kind of prayer for Owen.

“When it was so dark at St. Michael’s playground that we couldn’t see the basket, we couldn’t see Mary Magdalene, either. What Owen liked best was to practice the shot until we lost Mary Magdalene in the darkness. Then he would stand under the basket with me and say, ‘CAN YOU SEE HER?’

‘Not anymore,’ I’d say.

‘YOU CAN’T SEE HER, BUT YOU KNOW SHE’S STILL THERE—RIGHT?’ he would say.

‘Of course she’s still there!’ I’d say. […]

‘YOU ABSOLUTELY KNOW SHE’S THERE—EVEN THOUGH YOU CAN’T SEE HER?’ he asked me.

‘Yes!’ I screamed.

‘WELL, NOW YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT GOD,’ said Owen Meany, ‘I CAN’T SEE HIM—BUT I ABSOLUTELY KNOW HE IS THERE.’”

Owen’s analogy of the certainty of the statue’s presence helps John to understand Owen’s certainty in the existence of God. Ironically, it is not until Owen has died that John will adopt a faith in God. He will be keenly aware, however, that it is because of Owen that John believes in God. The Mary Magdalene statue, too, takes on a greater importance when Owen removes it from its pedestal and places it in the Great Hall as an act of protest against the headmaster of Gravesend Academy.

“IF YOU CARE ABOUT SOMETHING, YOU HAVE TO PROTECT IT—IF YOU’RE LUCKY ENOUGH TO FIND A WAY OF LIFE YOU LOVE, YOU HAVE TO FIND THE COURAGE TO LIVE IT.

‘What do I need courage for?’ I asked him.

‘YOU WILL NEED IT,’ he told me. ‘WHEN YOU’RE NOTIFIED TO REPORT FOR YOUR PREINDUCTION PHYSICAL, YOU’RE GOING TO NEED SOME COURAGE THEN, AFTER YOUR PHYSICAL.’”

Owen’s assertion that John will need courage in the future is an example of Owen’s ability to foretell the future. At the time, John likely concludes that Owen means that courage will be necessary if and when John is sent into combat in Vietnam. However, it is the amputation of John’s finger that Owen is speaking of. In that moment, Owen will once again urge John to have courage, and Owen’s meaning here will be made clear to John in retrospect.

“When I want to be ‘wicked,’ I show the finger; correction—I show what’s missing, I show not the finger. […]

‘Don’t you point that thing at me!’ Hester was fond of saying.

But it was not ‘that thing,’ it was not anything that upset her; it was what was missing! The amputation was very clean—it was the cleanest cut imaginable. There’s nothing grotesque, or mangled—or even raw looking—about the stump. The only thing wrong with me is what’s missing. Owen Meany is missing.”

John’s missing index finger, which Owen removes in the monument shop, saves him from being drafted into combat for the conflict in Vietnam. He regards this act as Owen’s saving of John’s life. The place where the finger should be, however, becomes a lifelong reminder of Owen’s sacrifice, his and John’s friendship, and, most importantly, Owen’s absence. The absent finger echoes Owen’s absence.

“It was October; we were in Washington with fifty thousand other antiwar demonstrators. We assembled opposite the Lincoln Memorial and marched to the Pentagon, where we were met by lines of U.S. marshals and military police; […]

I was carrying nothing; I was still a little self-conscious about my missing finger. […] But I tried to feel I was part of the demonstration; sadly, I didn’t feel I was a part of it—I didn’t feel I was a part of anything. I had a 4-F deferment; I would never have to go to war, or to Canada. By the simple act of removing the first two joints of my right index finger, Owen Meany had enabled me to feel completely detached from my generation.”

Ironically, though Owen’s removing John’s finger keeps John out of combat, John notes that it isolates him from his peers. He does not share in their vulnerability to being sent to war. This reinforces Owen’s insistence that those who oppose the conflict in Vietnam only do so for self-serving reasons—they seek to preserve their own lives and are not necessarily concerned with the lives of the Vietnamese citizens and soldiers who become casualties.

“I sat in the dark of the vestry office, thinking that religion was only a career for Pastor Merrill. He taught the same old stories, with the same old cast of characters; he preached the same old virtues and values; and he theologized on the same old ‘miracles’—yet he appeared not to believe in any of it. His mind was closed to the possibility of a new story […] Owen Meany had believed that his death was necessary if others were to be saved from a stupidity and hatred that was destroying him.”

Here John speaks directly to the theme of Religious Faith and Doubt. He is frustrated by Rev. Merrill’s inability to agree with Owen’s beliefs about the importance of miracles. This will become ironic later when Rev. Merrill regains his faith after believing he has witnessed a miracle that, in truth, is merely John playing a trick on him. This quote, too, reinforces Owen’s belief that he has been specially chosen by God.

“And I know: I will hear from [Owen]—from time to time—again. It is typical of Owen, who was always guilty of overkill; he should understand that I don’t need to hear from him to know if he is there. Like his rough, gray replacement of Mary Magdalene, the statue that Owen said was like the God he knew was there—even in the dark, even though invisible—I have no doubt that Owen is there.”

When Owen is alive, John consistently doubts many of Owen’s claims, including that he is an instrument of God and that he knows the date of his death. After Owen’s death, however, John gains a new faith in Owen’s assertions—one that parallels a religious faith, in keeping with the book’s theme. Likewise, the act of Owen speaking to John posthumously parallels the religious miracles that Owen insisted to be proof of God’s existence.

“At that precise moment, that is what he’d prayed. Then Owen Meany hit the next pitch. This is what a self-centered religion does to us: it allows us to use it to further our own ends. How could the Rev. Lewis Merrill agree with me—that Mr. and Mrs. Meany were ‘monsters of superstition’—if he himself believed that God had listened to his prayer at that Little League game; and that God had not ‘listened’ to him since? Because he’d wished my mother dead, my father said, God had punished him; God had taught Pastor Merrill not to trifle with prayer. And I suppose that was why it had been so difficult for Mr. Merrill to pray for Owen Meany.”

In keeping with the theme of religious faith and doubt, adult John expresses his frustrations with Rev. Merrill’s lack of faith. He feels Merrill’s belief in the power of prayer is inconsistent. Yet, Merrill’s revelation to John about his prayer wishing that Tabby would die helps John to understand many of Rev. Merrill’s actions and theological beliefs in retrospect. Further, his prayer regarding Tabby serves as a foil to the prayer Owen Meany requests that Merrill say for him.

“‘…earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,’ Pastor Merrill was saying, and I was thinking that my father was quite a fake; after all, he had met the miracle of Owen Meany, face to face, and still hadn’t believed in him—and now he believed everything, not because of Owen Meany but because I had tricked him. I had fooled him with a dressmaker’s dummy; Owen Meany had been the real miracle, but my father’s faith was restored by an encounter with a dummy, which the poor fool had believed was my mother—reaching out to him from beyond her grave.”

Just before Owen’s funeral, John’s lifelong quest to discover his father’s identity finally comes to fruition; it is, as Owen cautioned him, disappointing. John regards Pastor Merrill as a weak and faithless man, who should be moved by the miracle of Owen Meany but is not. Owen’s and Pastor Merrill’s conflicting views about the role of miracles in faith—a key aspect of the religious faith and doubt theme—defines their relationship. That Pastor Merrill is easily “tricked” into believing in the importance of miracles as proof of God’s existence, at last, frustrates John and further solidifies John’s disdain for him and his version of theology.

“‘He was so easy to lift up!’ Mary Beth Baird said to me. ‘He was so light—he weighed nothing at all! How could he have been so light?’ she asked me. That was when I discovered that I couldn’t speak. I had lost my voice. It occurs to me now that it wasn’t my voice that I wanted to hear. If I couldn’t hear Owen’s voice, I didn’t want to hear anyone’s. It was only Owen’s voice that I wanted to hear; and when Mary Beth Baird spoke to me, that was when I knew that Owen Meany was gone.”

John’s inability to speak, his loss of “voice,” parallels Rev. Merrill’s stutter (which symbolizes his failed faith) and is symbolic of the death of Owen. The world has lost Owen and his voice, which spoke such truth for years. Without Owen, John is unable to communicate and unable to articulate his grief. It is in his inability to respond to Mary Beth Baird that the reality of Owen’s death sinks in. John will dwell on this moment at Owen’s funeral and wish that he’d been able to respond.

“I haven’t seen [Lewis Merrill] since the day he committed Owen Meany’s body to the ground. I hear from Dan that he’s a whale of a preacher, and that there’s not a trace of the slight stutter that once marred his speech. At times I envy Lewis Merrill; I wish someone could trick me the way I tricked him into having such absolute and unshakable faith. For although I believe I know what the real miracles are, my belief in God disturbs and unsettles me much more than not believing ever did […]

How could Owen Meany have known what he ‘knew’? […] If God had a hand in what Owen ‘knew,’ what a horrible question that poses! For how could God have let that happen to Owen Meany?”

John’s words speak directly to the novel’s theme of religious faith and doubt. Throughout his life, John waivers in his faith. At times, he is adamant that Owen’s unfailing certainty of God’s existence is unrealistic. But Owen’s death—and Owen’s knowledge of it—serves to both strengthen and weaken John’s faith, in a sense. He, like many humans, is dumbfounded by the idea that a caring God could intentionally “allow” the death of a person like Owen Meany. Similarly, that Pastor Merrill is so easily “tricked” into believing that the baseball through the church window is an act of God (or, an act of the late Owen Meany) underscores John’s belief in the futility of faith.

“I caught the grenade, although it wasn’t as easy to handle as a basketball—I was lucky. I looked at Owen, who was already moving toward me.

‘READY?’ he said; I passed him the Chicom grenade and opened my arms to catch him. He jumped so lightly into my hands, I lifted him up—as easily as I had always lifted him.

After all: I had been practicing lifting up Owen Meany—forever.”

In this moment, the reader understands that Owen’s insistence that he and John be able to sink the basketball dunk shot in three seconds is not merely a silly goal of Owen’s. Owen, certain of how he will die, is devoted to ensuring that John will not also die by the grenade. Their constant practicing, however, provides an important wrinkle in the destiny and human agency theme, suggesting that the latter is necessary to ensure the former.