Armlessness In A Prayer For Owen Meany

In John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving explores how difficult it can be to accept one’s destiny. Images of armlessness often are used to demonstrate the frustration that people may feel when they find that they cannot change what destiny holds for them. At the opening of the novel, Watahantowet is introduced. Watahantowet lived in Gravesend during the period of time of the British colonists settling in New England, when Native Americans were fighting to protect the land. The novel’s narrator, John Wheelwright, describes the totem pole of Watahantowet as being an armless man, which the first instance in which images of armlessness are used to demonstrate helplessness. The helplessness of Watahantowet is reflected in the struggles

Soon after Watahantowet’s story, the novel’s main characters, John and Owen, are introduced. One day, while playing baseball, John’s mother, Tabitha, was killed by a foul ball hit by Owen. Nobody had expected that Owen, who was very small and a poor baseball player, could hit a ball so hard. Owen tries to explain to John what had happened: "GOD HAS TAKEN YOUR MOTHER. MY HANDS WERE THE INSTRUMENT. GOD HAS TAKEN MY HANDS. I AM GOD'S INSTRUMENT" (90). Owen believes that God had used his hands to hit the foul ball which killed Tabitha. Tabitha’s death was terrible for John and Owen, who also saw Tabitha as a mother to him. To show that he still loved Owen, John gave him his most prized possession, which was a stuffed armadillo. Later, when Owen returns the armadillo to John, he amputated its claws, which symbolizes the loss of a source of protection in their lives. Also, by removing the armadillo’s claws, Owen shows how he wishes that he could take away his own arms that caused the death of

For example, he saw his name on Scrooge’s grave during the church’s Christmas pageant, which showed him the date when will die. Also, he spent many hours playing basketball, even though he was so small. While he didn’t know why basketball was so important to him, he worked hard with John to dunk the basketball. During the Vietnam War, Owen’s responsibility was to escort the bodies of dead servicemen back to their families. At the end of the novel, Owen had asked John to visit him in Arizona; when he knew that his death date was approaching. While escorting a group of Vietnamese children to the restroom, Dick Jarvis, who lost his brother in the war, tossed a grenade into the group. In order to save the children, John and Owen use the shot that they practiced so long on the basketball court to deflect the grenade. While Owen saves the children’s lives, he loses his arms in the explosion, which causes him to die: “Owen Meany’s arms were missing… Nowhere else was injured” (625). What was remarkable about his death was that only his arms were damaged. Instead of running away from his destiny and trying to change it, he accepted what was supposed to happen to him, even if it meant dying to save