She died watching television; Dan found her with her thumb on the remote control, so that the channel continued to change. During John's most recent visit to 80 Front Street he visits Dan each August , Dan asked John again to move back from Canada and return to Gravesend, saying that Owen has been dead for twenty years, and it is time for John to forgive and forget.
But John says that he cannot forget, and deflects Dan's questioning by asking questions about the theater. Writing in September, , John says that a new school year has begun at the Bishop Strachan School, but that he has been troubled by a new faculty member named Eleanor Pribst, who is a sexual bully with snobbish notions about literature.
John remembers that before Owen died, Hester vowed not to attend his funeral: she told him that she would marry him and follow him anywhere, but that she refused to attend his "fucking funeral" if he insisted on going to Vietnam.
In , John attends the March on the Pentagon with his cousin, but because of his amputated finger he feels utterly detached; there is no chance that he will be sent to Vietnam, and he suspects as Owen does that most of the protesters are simply afraid to be drafted. John remembers the time just after Owen's death, in the summer of He goes to the Meany household to speak to Mr. Meany about the funeral arrangements--he wants Rev.
Merrill to perform the service--and Mr. Meany takes him into Owen's room, where he is shocked to see that Owen has attached Mary Magdalene's arms to John's mother's dressmaker's dummy. John goes through Owen's things, but does not find the baseball that killed his mother.
Meany--as Mrs. Meany angrily objects in the background--tells John that Owen was not natural; he was, Mr. Meany claims, a virgin birth. He says that he told Owen this fact when Owen was about eleven--at about the same time as John's mother died--and that the infamous "great insult" the Catholic Church has paid the Meanys is to disbelieve their claim.
Meany also shows John Owen's tombstone, which he claims Owen made for himself six months before he died. It is exactly like the vision of Scrooge's tombstone Owen had while acting in A Christmas Carol --and the date inscribed on the tombstone is the actual date of Owen's death.
John thinks that the Meanys are monsters for telling their eleven-year-old son that he was a virgin birth, a kind of second Christ, when it is obviously, patently, untrue. John talks to Rev. Merrill about it, and the reverend agrees--though he disagrees with John that Owen's foreknowledge of his own death constitutes a miracle, which John does believe. As they argue about faith, John suddenly remembers seeing the reverend's face in the bleachers the day his mother was killed--he feels suddenly that Owen is very close to him.
John knows at once that the Rev. Merrill is his father, and that Merrill was the man his mother waved to just before she died. The reverend admits the truth, and says that it was Tabby's death that shattered his faith in God. He says that when he saw her walking by the baseball field, he prayed for a split second that she would die; immediately after that, Owen's baseball struck her. Merrill believes that he killed John's mother by wishing her dead, and that, as punishment, God has turned his face away from him.
John, numbly disappointed to learn that his father is the spineless Rev. Merrill, thinks that this is nonsense. That night, he retrieves his mother's dummy from Owen's bedroom, places it outside the church, and throws the baseball through the reverend's window.
The reverend comes outside, sees the dummy in the red dress, and believes that it is Tabby Wheelwright come back from the grave. He falls to his hands and knees, his faith restored. The following day at Owen's service, he delivers a powerful and sincere eulogy, and his faith never wavers again. He hurls it at John, who tosses it to Owen; Owen leaps into the air, and John holds him up so that he can thrust the grenade into a high window alcove--a move exactly like the The Shot.
The children are shielded from the blast, but Owen's arms are blown off, and he bleeds to death. Back in Gravesend and before Owen's funeral, John goes to see the Rev. During the meeting, Owen's ghost possesses the reverend and causes him to admit that he is John's father. The reverend claims that he prayed for John's mother to die just before the foul ball hit her, and that, in vengeance, God has turned his face from him.
To restore his father's faith, John plays a prank in which he places a dressmaker's dummy in such a way as to make the reverend think he is seeing John's mother's ghost. His faith restored, the reverend delivers a passionate eulogy for Owen, calling him his "hero" and pleading for God to give him back. From his house in Toronto, John remembers that also before the funeral, he paid a visit to the Meanys, where Mr. Meany reveals a shocking fact: he claims that Owen was a virgin birth, just like Jesus Christ.
He tells John that he told Owen this when Owen was about eleven--about the same time that Owen accidentally killed John's mother. John considers this revelation monstrous, and says that it cannot be true. It remains unclear what John believes about Owen's parentage, however, and the mystery is never explained.
Ace your assignments with our guide to A Prayer for Owen Meany! SparkTeach Teacher's Handbook. The end of the novel takes all of these seemingly unrelated details and events and ties them into a pretty neat little bundle.
John hasn't been rambling about just any old thing that popped into his head all this time; he was building up to Owen's big moment. The end of the novel plunks us in sunny, hot Phoenix, Arizona.
Owen is in the army, and one of his big duties is to escort the bodies of dead soldiers back to their families.
He asks John to come meet him in Arizona, telling him that they can have a nice, relaxing vacation together. Of course, this isn't the whole story. Owen believes that he's supposed to die on July 8, , and he is almost certain, based on the dreams he's been having, that John has to be there.
When it all goes down and Dick Jarvits throws a grenade at the boys in the airport bathroom, we start understanding the images that have been confronting us this whole time. Owen and John use The Shot to get the grenade away from the kids.
His sense of political outrage is strictly emotional. The answer is that I would have to meet someone like Owen Meany. If I'd had Johnny Wheelwright's experience in that novel, I would probably be a believer too. But I haven't had that experience—I only imagined it. Rushdie laughed and came right back at me. English classes in high schools, and in colleges and universities, are the same three novels that have been banned in various schools—and in some libraries.
In the area of Vermont where I live, I visit schools where my novels are taught; I've attended a fair number of A. English classes, just to talk to the kids and answer their questions. I'm lucky, as a writer, that I've always maintained a very young audience; that my novels are taught in courses, both in high school and at colleges and universities, helps to keep the age of my audience young.
That matters more to me at sixty-six than it once did. Mark agreed.
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