I think, at its core, A Prayer for Owen Meany might be a ghost story. He first scoffs at doubt, then confronts it, then embraces it and emerges from it with a stronger conviction.
Owen believes-in God, in himself, in the future-and works tirelessly, shrewdly, uncompromisingly in support of that faith. More than that, however, Irving is building a case for Owen’s type of faith. Along the way, Irving lays the foundation for what comes at the end of the book. Instead, he provides a slow biography of Owen and John, with an emphasis on their eternal friendship despite Owen’s involvement in the death of John’s mother. Irving doesn’t let us take any shortcuts. From his admission into the army to his practising of “the shot”, Owen devotes his entire life to preparing for his single, shining moment of sacrifice. What’s creepy is that Owen is aware of this, and as the story progresses, it becomes clearer that Owen is manipulating events to bring his vision of the future to come to pass. We know that Owen isn’t going to make it out of this alive, and gradually we learn that in the process he will also make himself a hero. From the beginning, the narrator-John Wheelwright-hints that there is an element of fate to the story. We don’t find out how different until the very last pages, when everything Irving has left simmering for six hundred pages finally comes to a sharp boil. And those blatant capital letters scattered across the pages do a brilliant job reminding one that Owen Meany is Different. Even if one is not reading aloud, or being read to, one can imagine a voice as one reads silently. Owen’s appearance can be described, but such descriptions are transitory-they come and go throughout the text, and it is easy to forget them (or, as in my case, fail to reify them properly). Thematically, however, Owen’s voice is the most striking signal of his otherness.
Why is Owen’s voice different? There is a reason according to the plot. I imagine the voice of Linus from A Charlie Brown Christmas, slightly higher-pitched and perhaps louder. I don’t visualize things when I read (I can’t picture Owen’s creepy child proportions, no matter how hard I try), but I can imagine his voice. It’s impossible to convey that on the page, but Irving tries by rendering Owen’s dialogue in ALL CAPS-during Owen’s few speeches, these can run to paragraphs or a page. The eponymous character in this book has a distinctive, almost shrill pre-pubescent voice, even into adulthood. A Prayer for Owen Meany is a careful, tightly-managed piece of stage magic wrapped up into a book. John Irving is a master of the messed-up.
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