A Prayer for Owen Meany

Headstones are a recurring motif in the narrative. When Owen plays the role of the “Ghost of Christmases Yet to Come” in Dan Needham’s direction of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, he is certain that he witnesses his own name and date of death carved onto the prop headstone of Ebenezer Scrooge. Though others try to convince Owen that this cannot be true—blaming a severe fever he suffered throughout the performance—Owen insists that this is indeed what he saw. This moment symbolizes Owen’s life purpose as being an agent of God. Coupled with the dream in which he witnesses images of the events surrounding his death, Owen becomes convinced not only that God is revealing his future death to him, but that Owen is a tool by which the lives of others will be saved. Years later, Owen will create his own actual headstone in his father’s granite shop, complete with his eventual military rank and the correct date of his death. In this way, he makes his dream literal, “cementing” its truth for all to know. Both headstones, too, are reminiscent of the wedding gift that Owen made for Tabby Wheelwright—a stone with her wedding date that resembled, in John’s view, a headstone. At this time, John feels as though Owen were foretelling Tabby’s death. In a manner of speaking, he is.

Importantly, this motif underscores Owen’s ability to know the future and the novel’s theme of Mortality and the Inevitability of Death. Owen, certain that he has been singled out by God, does not fear his death and does not attempt to avoid or thwart its unfolding. Instead, he spends much of his life taking steps to ensure that his death unfolds in the manner that it has been revealed to him in his recurring dream.

Starting in childhood, Owen and John repeatedly practice slam-dunking a basketball. It is a mutual effort in which John lifts Owen to the hoop, with a goal of completing the shot under four seconds; later, Owen will aim for a three-second goal. John often finds the practicing tedious and boring and does not understand Owen’s fervor in pursuing his obsession. The reason for perfecting the basketball shot only becomes clear to John when he must pass a lit grenade to Owen before it detonates. His small size allows John to lift him so that the grenade can be moved over a window ledge and out of harm’s way: “I had been practicing lifting up Owen Meany—forever” (623). The motif of the shot connects thematically to Destiny and Human Agency. While Owen believes he and John are destined to pull off their final “shot,” his insistence on practicing it relentlessly suggests that Owen understands that his own agency is necessary to fulfill his destiny.