Examples Of What Proven To Be True In A Prayer For Owen Meany

Dissatisfaction Sometimes, events, actions, or thoughts that seem excellent or prosperous in the beginning prove themselves to be less beneficial than they originally may seem. The aforementioned theme is proven to be true in A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. In the novel, the narrator, John Wheelwright, is best friends with Owen Meany, a small boy with a strange voice who believes himself to be God’s instrument. Even after Owen accidentally kill’s John mother by hitting her with a baseball, the two boys remain friends. John tells tales of his and Owen’s lives, from when they are kids to Owen’s death, and even after that horrible event. Owen effects every aspect of John’s life in a way that no other person could. The novel, however,

John spends much of his childhood wondering who his real father is, even though he loves his adoptive father, Dan Needham. After his mother dies and is unable to tell him the identity of his father herself, John tries to find out who his father is. After years of searching and wondering, he realizes that the man who created him is none other than the timid and doubtful Reverend Merrill. After Rev. Merrill lets it slip that John is his son, John explains, “The wholly anticlimactic, unsatisfying, and disagreeable news that the Rev. Lewis Merrill was my father…is just one example of the condition of universal disappointment” (543). The confession of his father, as John clearly states, lets him down. Although he previously guesses that it would be someone he knows, John’s possible relation to the hypocritical and cowardly Reverend has not crossed his mind. John explains that this divulgence of information is more proof that disappointment is universal and reoccurring. John’s more personal discoveries also to out to be not as satisfactory as originally planned when he remains a virgin at forty years old. From a young age, John has never had a way with

For instance, both he and Owen have lots of admiration for President John F. Kennedy. Kennedy appears to be a sort of role model to Owen, whose opinion John takes very seriously. This admiration diminishes, however, after Owen discovers that “JFK [a married man] was diddling Marilyn Monroe—and countless others” (367). Both John and Owen’s belief that Kennedy is trustworthy is tainted after this revelation, and they now believe that he is less respectable than they previously thought. The fact that the President is married while he was having affairs further upsets Owen and John because it further emphasizes his dishonorable nature.Yet again, John is let down by the American government when he discovers the Iran-Contra scandal. After mistakenly assuming that the Reagan administration would be a satisfactory one, John is yet again reminded of how disappointing life is when hearing about the ridiculousness that occurred between USA, Nicaragua, and Iran. John is irritated after reading that “President Reagan ‘actually led the first efforts to conceal essential details of his secret arms-for-hostages program and kept it alive after it became public…the President subsequently made misleading statements about the arms sales’—on four separate occasions!” (431). The entire scandal deeply angers John. The Reagan administration’s actions and the way America responds to this