A Prayer for Owen Meany

John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany (1989) is the novelist’s seventh and best-selling novel to date. Through a series of flashbacks, it tells the story of an unusually small boy with a strange voice named Owen Meany who believes himself to be specially chosen by God. Narrated by John Wheelwright, Owen’s best friend, the narrative alternates between the past—which begins in 1950s New Hampshire and extends to the late 1960s—and the present, Toronto in 1987. John recounts how Owen’s insistence that he knows the date of his death comes to fruition. Reviews of the novel at the time of its release were mixed, with some critics finding the plot contrived and others praising its heartwarming tone.

Irving, the author of 15 novels, is regarded as building upon the tradition of the 19th century novel. He counts Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick among his main influences. He is a three-time nominee for the National Book Award, which he received in 1980 for The World According to Garp. His novel The Cider House Rules was also made into a feature film for which Irving won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2000.

This guide references the 2013 hardcover by William Morrow, Harper Collins.

Plot Summary

A Prayer for Owen Meany alternates between 1987 Toronto (the novel’s present) and the events of narrator John Wheelwright’s friendship with the titular character. John looks back on the period beginning in the 1950s when he and Owen are young children to Owen’s death in 1968.

John and Owen attend the same Sunday School class at the Episcopalian church in Gravesend, New Hampshire. Owen is unusually small and speaks in a strange voice. Owen is so small that his Sunday School peers make a game of passing him over their heads when the teacher is not in the room. John is the only child of Tabitha “Tabby” Wheelwright, and his only knowledge of his father is that Tabby met him while traveling on the train to Boston. The two live with Tabby’s mother, Harriet Wheelwright, and Harriet’s household caretakers. When Tabby marries Dan Needham, she and John move to the faculty dormitory apartment where Dan resides. The first time John meets Dan is cemented in his memory by the taxidermy armadillo Dan gifts John and that immediately captivates Owen. John and Tabby often visit his cousins—Noah, Simon, and Hester—and Tabby’s sister Martha and her husband in Sawyer Depot, New Hampshire. She takes singing lessons in Boston once a week, traveling there by train; John frequently imagines her meeting his father on the same train.

An otherwise ordinary Little League game changes John’s life forever when the coach instructs Owen to swing at one of the pitches. Due to his size, Owen is usually discouraged from swinging, as he is guaranteed a walk. Owen connects with the ball, sending it into foul territory. Tabby, observing the game, stands to wave at someone from across the diamond and is struck with the ball, dying instantly. Owen immediately pedals home while the police search for the baseball, which John is certain Owen has taken with him. Afterward, Owen delivers all of his baseball cards to John overnight. John, viewing this as Owen’s means of asking for forgiveness, returns them—under the advice of Dan—and gives Owen his armadillo. Owen then, without words, returns the armadillo, but without its claws.

In the years that follow, Owen and John continue to be the best of friends. A key moment in Owen’s life occurs when the boys are 11 years old and Owen is cast as the Christ Child in the Christmas pageant held annually at the Episcopalian church. Owen, usually cast as the angel who informs Mary of her pregnancy, makes his case for switching roles by pointing out that he is small enough to fit in the baby cradle. That same year he convinces Dan—director of the local Gravesend theater—to cast him as the Ghost of Christmases Yet to Come in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. On the final night of the performance, Owen, suffering from a fever, passes out on stage. When he comes to, he insists that his own name and date of death were inscribed on the prop headstone of Ebenezer Scrooge. That same evening, Harriet’s longtime housekeeper Lydia dies unexpectedly, and Harriet believes it was her death, rather than his own, that Owen foresaw.

John and Owen both attend the prestigious Gravesend Academy, the private boys’ school where Dan teaches. John gains admission through his connection to Dan, and Owen through his outstanding academic achievement. As the Meanys are unable to afford tuition, Harriet Wheelwright foots the bill for Owen’s education. Owen is liked by all students and begins a popular opinion column in the school newspaper that criticizes the administration and, with time, becomes a source of guidance in their decision making. When a new headmaster is appointed, however, Owen’s opinions prove threatening to him. The headmaster sets out on a quest to see that Owen is expelled from school. Meanwhile, Owen’s popularity grows, and he even befriends the unpopular religion teacher, Rev. Lewis Merrill, who also serves as the pastor of the local Congregational church.

Owen is a devoted believer in a Christian God and frequently shares his theological beliefs with John throughout their childhood, adolescence, and teen years. Owen is critical of Catholicism and a champion of miracles, insisting that the events recorded in the Bible are proof of God’s existence. At this time, Owen begins having recurring dreams that will plague him for the remainder of his life. The dreams offer images of Owen’s death. Owen frequently meets with Rev. Merrill to discuss these dreams but does not reveal their details to John. With time, he will speak of the dreams to both John and John’s cousin Hester (whom Owen subsequently enters into a romantic relationship with) who, with frustration, insist Owen is foolish to believe the dream will come to fruition.

While John spends his summers giving campus tours for the admissions department, Owen works in his family’s granite quarry. He is highly skilled in making headstones and other monuments, especially with a piece of machinery called a diamond wheel. After their time at Gravesend, John too will work in the monument shop during the summer.

The Academy’s headmaster finally achieves his goal and sees to it that Owen is expelled mere months before graduation. Owen, the class’s valedictorian, asks Rev. Merrill to say a prayer for him when Merrill leads the morning prayers in front of the student body the next day. Merrill agrees, but instead of voicing a prayer for Owen, he instead asks the students to pray silently for Owen. The silence stretches on, and Merrill stands up to the headmaster, who shouts at Merrill to put an end to the prayer.

Without his diploma from Gravesend, Owen’s future of attending either Harvard or Yale are compromised. However, he insists he does not wish to be separated from John and prefers to attend the local state college anyway. Owen obtains a scholarship by joining the Reserve Officers Training Corp (ROTC). His tuition will be paid for and, in exchange, he will engage in military service upon graduation. John, Hester, and others feel this is a waste of Owen’s intelligence, and, as the conflict in Vietnam has begun to heat up, a foolish decision. Owen assures John and Hester that he must enter combat in Vietnam, as this is what his dream foretells. John, meanwhile, studies literature, then pursues graduate studies while Owen—to everyone’s relief—is given a “desk job” assignment, having failed the obstacle course portion of the service test due to his small size.

Throughout this time, Owen is adamant that not only does he know his precise date of death, but that he knows specific aspects of it, too. He continues to trust in his faith, certain that his dream, which shows him saving the lives of a group of Vietnamese children, indicates that he was chosen as an instrument of God. He also insists to John that God will one day reveal John’s father’s identity, though John is skeptical. Indeed, during high school the two travel to Boston in search of information about his father from Tabby’s former singing teacher, instead uncovering Tabby’s secret life as a nightclub performer.

When Owen is given leave from his military duties, always spends it with John. The two pass the time in the same way they have done since they were young—by practicing a basketball shot in which John lifts Owen to reach the net in order to dunk the ball. Owen is determined to sink the shot in under four seconds, then finally does. They practice relentlessly, until Owen can make the shot in three seconds with no difficulty.

As John’s graduate career ends, Owen urges him to come up with a plan to avoid being sent into combat. When John is summoned for his draft physical, Owen tells him to meet him at the monument shop. There, using the diamond wheel, Owen removes John’s index finger, ensuring he will not be able to fire a gun and saving him from being drafted into combat. Owen returns to his desk job but constantly petitions to be sent into active service. Meanwhile, John and Hester continue to protest the US actions in Vietnam.

Adult John then recalls the events surrounding Owen’s funeral. He meets with Rev. Merrill about the funeral services. As they talk, however, John hears Owen’s voice telling him to look inside Merrill’s desk drawer. There John finds the baseball that killed his mother. John knows instantly that this is proof that Merrill is his father. Rev. Merrill explains that, on that day at the baseball diamond when Tabby waved to him, he prayed that she would drop dead. After God answered this prayer, Merrill’s faith was forever shattered.

John is finally able to convey the circumstances of Owen’s death. As Owen has told him, John is present at the time of Owen’s death. Owen, whose role in the military is to accompany the bodies of soldiers killed in action to their families in the United States, asks John to visit him. There has been a mix-up with a body being sent to the wrong state, and Owen will need to attend the soldier’s funeral in Phoenix. He proposes that John fly to Phoenix where they can spend a few days together. John, Owen, and Owen’s superior, Major Rawls, meet the fallen soldier’s family, which includes the soldier’s younger brother. Dressed in Army fatigues and wielding a bayonet, the brother seems to be emotionally unstable. Later, at the soldier’s wake, the brother shows Owen various weapons and grenades he possesses, some of them shipped in pieces from his brother himself. John and Owen spend the remainder of their time in Phoenix eating, drinking, and passing the time in the hotel swimming pool.

As the date of Owen’s supposed death approaches—July 8, 1968—Owen grows anxious and confused. Having spent much of his life certain he would die in combat in Vietnam, he wonders if he has misinterpreted the dream all along. The time comes for both him and John to separate as they depart from Phoenix. As they await John’s plane for Boston, a group of Vietnamese children—orphaned refugees—arrives, accompanied by a group of nuns. One of the nuns asks Owen to accompany the boys to the men’s room. As he returns, the brother of the deceased soldier appears, armed with a live grenade. Owen, speaking Vietnamese in his childlike voice, commands the children to lie down, and orders John to pass the grenade—like a basketball—to Owen. John then lifts Owen—just as they had practiced so many times before—so that he may hoist the grenade up and out of the airport window. Owen’s arms are severed in the blast, and Owen dies from blood loss.

Immediately after Owen’s funeral, John moves to Canada, angry at the United States government. There he obtains citizenship and puts down new roots, determined never to reside in New Hampshire again. He visits Dan twice a year but wants nothing to do with Rev. Merrill. He gains a new faith in God, which he attributes to Owen Meany.