Themes Of A Prayer For Owen Meany By Thomas Hardy

In life some things just do not go according to plan. In Thomas Hardy's words, "nothing bears out in practice what it promises incipiently". In John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany, Hardy's belief can be linked to themes throughout the novel. The story focuses around the many periods of John Wheelwright's life from 1948 to 1968 in Gravesend, New Hampshire and in 1987 Toronto, Canada. In the beginning John narrates about how he befriends Owen Meany, a tiny boy with a weird voice, who he will always remember as the boy who accidentally killed his mother and the boy who made him a Christian. Tabitha Wheelwright is the single mother of John and almost like a second mother to Owen. Tabitha married Dan Needham, the drama teacher at Gravesend Academy,

after four years of dating. Sadly Tabitha was accidentally killed by a baseball Owen had hit, a year after her wedding. Since Tabitha died so young, she was not able to tell John who his biological father was, which consequently leads to mixed emotions about John's own identity and toward John's biological mother and father. Although Dan Needham was as much as of a father as he could be, John always struggled with his identity because he did not know who his biological Father is. Although Owen was too short and easily out of breath for most sports, he still love to play sports like basketball. Owen insists that John lifts him up in order to do a move called "The Shot" and does not give any sensible reason for trying to slam dunk in a matter of seconds. In the end of the book Owen and John recreate "The Shot" for a completely different purpose than basketball which ended up in the sad death of Owen Meany. Together Owen and John suffer many unplanned difficulties throughout the duration of the novel. Thomas Hardy's belief that events do not transpire according to plan, but instead lead to disappointing alternatives, is exemplified by Tabitha's death, John's father, and "The Shot" within Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany.