An Appropriate Ending

An Appropriate Ending

A Prayer for Owen Meany: An Appropriate Ending

The book, A Prayer for Owen Meany written by John Irving, suggests that the protagonist- Owen Meany – may be a messenger sent from God. The novel concludes appropriately. While reading the novel, the truth unravels itself and eventually answers questions that had been unsolved. For example, the reader can indicate the identity of John’s father, the relationship between the Meany parents and their son, and the uniqueness of Owen Meany.
Throughout the book, the reader tries to search for the unknown identity of John’s father. While growing up it’s apparent that John desires to discover his father but he never felt it necessary to do so until Tabitha’s untimely death. It is at this point and when John and Owen are consumed by the need to remember all the people who were present when his mother died. With thoughts of this subject still lingering in his mind, John suddenly believes that his mother was actually waving to his biological father seconds before she died due to “that fated baseball game.” John’s intuition was correct as he finally discovers that his biological father is in fact the Reverend Lewis Merrill. As one of the unanswered questions, the revelation of John’s missing parent provides closure.
Another ambiguous issue in the novel involves the relationship between Owen and his parents. The reader truly gets a glimpse of the unstable rapport between the three Meanys during the Christmas Pageant when Owen looks out into the audience and yells, “WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING HERE?” Owen dismisses the scene at the pageant by telling John that he wouldn’t understand “that old unspeakable outrage” inflicted upon his parents by the Catholics. The “persecution is [a mystery]” to John as well as the reader. Not until Owen’s death does John finally comprehend the reason why Owen reacted the way he did that night. Mr. Meany’s explanation that their family was persecuted because of Owen’s virgin-birth clarifies...

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