Summary Of A Prayer For Owen Meany

Aristotle defines tragedy as “an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude… with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish a catharsis of such emotions.” In John Irving’s tragedy, A Prayer for Owen Meany, Owen Meany is a boy who believes he is the instrument of god. Near the beginning of the book he hits a foul ball that kills his best friend’s mother. As both boys grow up, Owen begins to have ‘visions’, one of which is a vision in which he sees his future gravestone with the date of his death. He also has a reoccurring dream of his death, which turns out to be true. He dies in order to save a group of Vietnamese children and a handful of nuns from a hand grenade in an airport bathroom. John

The plot is the basis of a novel, and Irving’s long and twisted plot is the defining quality of A Prayer for Owen Meany’s tragic effect. According to Dorsch T.R in Aristotle Horace Longinus: Classical Literary Criticism, “Plot is the “first principle,” the most important feature of a tragedy.” The plot should start with and inciting moment, where according to Dorsch, “Its causes are downplayed but its effects are stressed.” When Owen Meany’s foul ball kills John Wheelwright’s mom, it has a great effect. It causes Owen to believe he is God’s instrument. The complex plot of the novel includes both anagnorisis and peripeteia. Dorsch explains that “peripiteia occurs when a character produces an effect opposite to that which he intended.” This is evidenced multiple times in the case of Randolph White, the headmaster of Gravesend Academy. When Owen Meany told the basketball team to put Dr. Dolder’s small Volkswagen Beetle up on the stage in the Great Hall, Randolph White saw it he immediately gathered the staff to bring it

Catharsis as described by Ley and Reinhold is the cleansing “of the tragic emotions of pity and fear”, specifically in a piece of tragedy. At the start of the book, the reader pities Owen Meany for his small size and peculiar voice. He is often picked up and passed around by Sunday school children, and is portrayed as psychically weak in the beginning. Throughout the book, the pity and fear for Owen Meany and his deadly fate continue to build, until the final scene where catharsis of these emotions is reached. As Owen ages, the pity the audience feels for him soon turns into fear of his imminent death as seen in his reoccurring prophecy like dream that tells the audience how he will die. It is only once the reader sees that Owen’s dream came true and that he died a hero as he had predicted, that feeling of fear and pity are purged in the