Just Jennifer

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving (William Morrow)

Owen Meany and John Wheelwright are, for the most part, two ordinary eleven-year olds growing up in New England.  Johnny is the illegitimate grandson of one of the town’s founders and Owen, the son of a quarry worker, is a smaller than normal child with a high voice, both causing his classmates to pick on him.  In baseball, Owen is the team’s favorite pinch hitter (as he always walks) and pinch runner (as he easily steals bases).  The one ball Owen hits is a foul ball that kills Johnny’s mother, something Johnny does not hold against Owen.  Instead, the two strike up an unlikely friendship, almost a protector/protectorate relationship, though who is protecting who is not always clear.  When Owen sees a tombstone with the precise date of his death on it (during an ill-fated production of A Christmas Carol) he turns this knowledge to his advantage and adopts an almost ethereal quality about him, allowing himself to speak whatever in on his mind without fear of retribution.  As the two enter young manhood and are faced with the Vietnam draft, Owen injures Johnny to save him from his fate, but Owen charges into the army, certain that his fate lies in Vietnam, only to meet it in Arizona trying to ease the pain of the family of a fallen soldier. 

From the first sentence of the novel, narrator Johnny Wheelwright acknowledges that Owen Meany is the reason he is a Christian, in whatever form he has chosen and allowed his faith to take. While there are many, many detailed stories about Owen and Johnny’s friendship and their life together, the theme remains the same:  Owen becomes the instrument that allows others to consider their faith and to follow the path set out before them.  Stylistically, Owen’s dialogue, ALWAYS WRITTEN IN CAPITAL LETTERS, is bothersome and unnecessary to get the points across.  While Owen may appear too good to be true, indeed too good to be of this world, there is something appealing in the time honored tale of two best friends looking out for each other, no matter what may come.  Written in 1989, A Prayer for Owen Meany is Irving’s seventh novel.  His most recent In One Person was published by Simon & Schuster this May.