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Summary Of A Prayer For Owen Meany

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The novel written by John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany, is a tragedy that centers around the friendship of John Wheelwright, the religiously skeptical narrator, and Owen Meany, who believes he is the instrument of God. The story is told through John’s perspective, and alternates between his youth with Owen in 1950’s-60’s New Hampshire, to his life in Canada, twenty years after Owen’s death. A Prayer for Owen Meany can be classified as a tragedy because it contains the two primary components of Aristotle's idea of tragedy: a “whole” plot and an archetypal protagonist . A Prayer for Owen Meany follows Aristotle’s analysis that a tragedy’s plot consists of a cause-and-effect chain, where each event in the story will lead to the other, and that the plot itself …show more content…

This is a turning point of the plot because until then everyone who was aware of the dream, but Owen, were sure that the premonitions were just fever-induced hallucinations and that he was not sent by God. However, Owen's accurate prediction of his own death is enough proof of his divine qualities. Owen's death leads the novel to its final stage, the resolution, which is when Owen is recognized as a hero by his community and as a miracle by John. At the end of the novel " Owen Meany was awarded the Soldier's Medal: "For heroism that involves the voluntary risk of life under conditions other than those of conflict with an opposing armed force."(Irving. 615-616)". This event parallels to the end of Owen's dream, where it was revealed that he would die in an act of heroism and be recognized as such. Therefore, Owen's dream, which initiated the cause-and-effect of the novel is complete. Yet, according to Aristotle's Poetics "The end of the tragedy is a katharsis (purgation, cleansing) of the tragic emotions of pity and fear.(Ley. 28)". So it is only when John goes through Catharsis

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