A Prayer For Owen Meany Theme Essay

Analytical Overview
The main theme of A Prayer for Owen Meany is religious faith--specifically, the relationship between faith and doubt in a world in which there is no obvious evidence for the existence of God. John writes on the first page of the book that Owen Meany is the reason that he is a Christian, and ensuing story is presented as an explanation of the reason why. Though the plot of the novel is quite complicated, the explanation for Owen's effect on John's faith is extremely simple: Owen's life is a miracle--he has supernatural visions and dreams, he believes that he acts as God's instrument, and he has divine foreknowledge of his own death--and offers miraculous and almost undeniable evidence of God's existence. The basic thematic
In the end, he invests more faith in Owen himself than he invests in God--he receives two visitations from Owen beyond the grave--and he concludes the novel by making Owen something of a messiah, asking God to allow Owen's
With his tiny, dwarfed body, his weirdly glowing skin, and his ethereally nasal voice (always represented in the book by capital letters), Owen is not entirely of this world--his appearance validates his bizarre spiritual life, in which he seems to be in direct communication with God. On the other hand, Owen is very much of this world: he grows up in a granite quarry, and his name is "Meany"--a word signifying commonness and smallness. For all his eccentricity, Owen in many ways represents the spiritual condition of humankind; the difference between most people and Owen is that Owen knows he is the instrument of God. His fatalistic faith centers around his prophetic knowledge of his own heroic death, for which he prepares all his life. Owen believes that everything that happens is the will of God—he continues to believe this even when he accidentally kills John's mother with a foul ball he hits at a Little League