Monday, October 14, 2013

A Prayer for Owen Meany Blog #4

            Throughout John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany, Owen Meany’s character develops significantly. The Owen Meany that we knew towards the beginning of the novel showed hints here and there that he might be a Christ figure or, as we soon find, a servant of God. All along it is known that Owen has a unique connection with God but it is not until the end, when Owen uses his voice to save the Vietnamese boys from Dick Jarvits’ grenade, that both Owen and the readers find out exactly why Owen is a servant of God. To Owen, the act of saving the Vietnamese boys is a sense of closure. He finally realizes his purpose in life. To the readers, however, Owen delivers a much deeper message. Owen is the voice of Irving’s message that while God is the creator of all things good in this world, he also brings death upon people; a death that no one can escape, not even Owen Meany, God’s own servant.
            Owen is connected to many deaths in Irving’s novel. Johnny Wheelwright tells us in the very first sentence of the novel “I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice-he was the instrument of my mother's death,” (1). Owen, who had never hit a baseball in a game in his life, just so happened to hit the ball hard enough to kill his best friend’s mother. Owen later describes the incident as an act of God which, given Irving’s theme, makes perfect sense. Owen was there to remind everybody, including the readers that death can strike at any time, even in the most unexpected form, and will almost always be an act of God.
            Owen Meany’s own death was not only an act of God, but also an extension on the nature of Owen as a Christ figure. Early in the novel, Owen is portrayed as a martyr as he accepts being passed around above the heads of his peers like a beach ball every time they have class and says nothing about it. In a similar, more significant way, Owen becomes a true martyr when he is killed by the hand grenade as he saves the Vietnamese boys. As he was dying, Owen cried out “ '. . . WHOSOEVER LIVETH AND BELIEVETH IN ME SHALL NEVER DIE,'” indicating that he was a servant of God until the day that he died, and that he, too, must leave the earth in the form of death (615). He also states that while he may be dead to the people of the earth, in the eyes of God, Owen Meany will never die.
            Owen is the example that death will come to everyone. However, he is also an example of how individuals can escape death in the eyes of God by living their lives in service to Him. In the beginning of the novel, Owen struggled with what denomination he would belong to, but soon found that no matter what denomination of the church he was a part of, God’s will was in him and he, as a servant of God, was to carry it out without fail before his inevitable death. In carrying out God’s will, Owen killed his best friend’s mother, but he also saved many young Vietnamese lives. Perhaps Johnny’s mother was killed because she had done God’s will on earth by raising Johnny, but the young Vietnamese boys were saved because they had not yet made their glorious contribution to the world.
            Foster’s ideas were the main driving force behind my close reading, especially when it came to discovering Owen to be a Christ figure. In correspondence to Foster’s focus on Christ figures, I also used his insight on biblical references to enhance my vision of Owen as a Christ figure. For example, I had begun to think that Owen was a Christ figure when I noticed that his reaction to his parents being at the A Christmas Carol could have been a biblical reference to the story of Young Jesus in the Temple.  I also used Perrine’s technique of testing my theories. My theory that Owen was a Christ figure worked out, while the importance of women in the story, along with a few other theories, did not seem to carry through the text. Using the close reading techniques of both Foster and Perrine allowed me to better understand the text.

            I would recommend this novel because it is a beautiful and quite interesting account of a friendship that has to be bound by some greater force if it can last through one friend killing the other’s mother. All throughout the novel, Irving does a fantastic job of planting creating references to a higher power being behind everything without giving too much away. As you read, you are constantly asking “why?” Why is his voice like that? Why are they still friends? Why is he so small? Why does Owen, as a teenager, finally decide that he can play basketball? Why do Johnny and Owen work with Vietnamese orphans? The “why” questioning begins to build up and the questions become deeper as we have more  knowledge behind us and suddenly, it all very nicely falls into place and God is left as the only, yet, very simple explanation for it all. As a reader, witnessing Owen finally figure out what his life has been all about makes you wonder, “What is my purpose in life?”. 

2 comments:

  1. In Maggie’s post, she talked a lot about how religion played a large role in her story, and how one of the characters, Owen, appeared to be a Christ figure. In A Prayer for Owen Meany, seems that Owen has good intentions about, and acts as a servant of God. In my independent reading book, The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, the government acts as a false servant of God, and their intention isn’t to help others and spread God’s word, but to control and deceive. The Republic of Gilead is based on a few biblical stories that skew the population’s ideas about religion. The main character, Offred, describes how the only interaction she has with the Bible is being read to by her master: “the Bible is kept locked up…We can be read to from it, by him, but we cannot read” (112). This passage demonstrates that Offred understands that her government’s “religion” isn’t true to God’s intentions, and that they’re simply using it as a means of control.

    Additionally, Maggie discussed how Owen shared that even though God is good, he also brings death upon us. In my book, Offred prays to God only once on her own grounds. She prays: “keep the others safe…If they have to die, let it be fast” (201). She recognizes that God has the power to kill, and prays that he uses it in a way that will help her friends and family. The government also uses God as a justification for killing traitors, such as when they hung various rebels on “The Wall.” This religious justification is similar to how Owen claims that killing his best friend’s mother was “an act of God.”

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  2. I have never read or even heard of A Prayer for Owen Meany before, but it is evident that you did an excellent job analyzing it. Even though I know absolutely nothing about the book, I understood you analysis and the meaning you found in it. You expertly used the advice and lessons we learned from authors such as Foster and Nabokov. You employed many of the techniques for noticing patterns that Foster wrote about in How to Read Literature like a Professor. By identifying certain patterns like the role of women or Owen's similarities to Christ, you discovered a lot about the deeper meaning of the novel. Although finding these sometimes hidden patterns can be very difficult, you didn't just stop there. Every inference that a reader makes has to be checked to make sure that there are absolutely no contradictions. Even the best analytical readers must check for assumptions and contradictions. You later changed your mind about the significance of women in the novel, but the idea of Owen as a Christ figure stayed. That ability to recognize where misreading might have occurred is a very valuable skill in close reading. So props to you for that! In all seriousness, A Prayer for Owen Meany sounds like a really amazing book. You said that it is one of those books that makes you always ask "why?". I'm really glad that you did ask that question and then answer it. Discovering the answers to those questions with reliable analytical skills is very rewarding in the end.

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