John Irving
CHAPTER 1: THE FOUL BALL
John Wheelwright, the narrator of the story, writes that he will always remember Owen Meany--not because of Owen's loud voice or his tiny body, or even because he was the instrument of John's mother's death, but because Owen Meany is the reason that John believes in God. John describes his history of religious faith, his conversion from Congregationalism to Episcopalianism and from Episcopalianism to Anglicanism. He says that he is not exactly a devout Christian, but he is a regular churchgoer and reads his prayer book often--more often, in fact, than he reads his Bible. He says that when he dies, he will attempt to be buried in New Hampshire next to his mother, though it will be difficult to have his body returned to the United States from Canada, where he now lives. He says that he has a "church-rummage" religious faith--one that needs patching up every Sunday. But he owes the faith he has to Owen Meany.
John remembers the way he and his friends used to torment Owen in Sunday school class. Owen had an unbelievably tiny body and undeveloped vocal cords, so that the only way he could be heard was to shout through his nose. In Sunday school, the teacher, Mrs. Walker, often walks out of the class--ostensibly to leave the students to think about their lessons, though John suspects that she simply needs a smoke--and when she does, the other students lift Owen up above their heads and pass him around the room. They love Owen--the girls call him a "little doll"--but they are too fascinated by his tininess to leave him alone. As he passes over their heads, he loses the change from his pockets and his baseball cards. Owen loves baseball cards, even though he is never allowed to swing at a pitch in Little League--his strike zone is so small, he is always forced to walk. When the teacher returns to class and blames Owen for the disarray, Owen never complains; John remembers that even when he was hung up from his locker at school and left dangling, he simply called out "NOT FUNNY!" in his ethereal nasal voice until someone took him down.
John writes that he grew up in the town of Gravesend, New Hampshire, where his family, the Wheelwrights, occupy a position of aristocratic prestige. In Gravesend during John's childhood, his maternal grandmother, Harriet Wheelwright, was the matriarch of the town, descended from John Adams and wielding the Wheelwright name with expert authority. John describes his ancestors' role in the founding of Gravesend--an earlier John Wheelwright, in 1638, bought the location from an Indian sagamore; this earlier John Wheelwright became a Puritan in England and was later expelled from Massachusetts for his unorthodox religious beliefs. John feels that much of his own religious confusion stems from his ancestor's legacy. John writes that Watahantowet, the Indian sagamore who sold the town site to the first Wheelwright, could not write, so he signed his name with his totem, an image of an armless man.
Of John's parents, his mother was the Wheelwright, not his father; but John's mother kept her maiden name and John was raised as a Wheelwright, never even knowing who his father was. John's mother occasionally referred to John's father as her "little fling." John's mother died when he was eleven, before ever telling him about his father. John remembers that once, as the two of them sat throwing rocks into the Squamscott River, Owen prophecized that John will learn about his father one day. Owen's little arms cannot pitch the rocks all the way into the water, but he tells John that even if his father does not come forward, God will reveal his presence to John. As he says this, he hurls a pebble all the way out into the water, surprising both John and himself. John says that with this stroke, Owen "began his lengthy contribution to my belief in God."
John talks a bit about the history of Gravesend, whose first great industry was lumber. John's grandmother always preferred trees to rocks, so that she was proud of the lumber trade and contemptuous of the Meany family, which ran a granite quarry. John remembers Owen telling him about the quality of granite required to make a gravestone, and remembers that he wondered why Owen wasn't deaf; there was something wrong with his size and his voice, but, despite the noise of the granite quarry, his ears were healthy. Owen also introduced John to Wall's History of Gravesend, a book that John refers to often in his own narrative.
John relates the story of his mother's pregnancy, during which time she never divulged the details of her affair, saying only that she met a man on the railroad that took her to Boston for singing lessons. Only her sister, John's Aunt Martha, was resentful; everyone else accepted her behavior as they always accepted her behavior, because she was beautiful and affectionate. John says that the only hurtful action she was incapable of making amends for was dying.
John remembers a scene from his childhood during which Owen loses his way in the dark passageway of his grandmother's mansion. Owen's nasal screams disturbed John's grandmother, who told John that Owen's voice could make dead mice come back to life. (He says that his grandmother was not an unkind woman--when her maid Lydia lost her leg, Mrs. Wheelwright hired another maid just to take care of Lydia.) Another time, when swimming in the quarry lake--an almost unfathomably deep body of water--Owen unties the rope the children used to anchor themselves to shore and hides in a rock crevice, making the other children believe that he was drowning. When none of them leap in after him, an enraged Owen appears on shore, screaming that his friends have chosen to let him die.
When John begins attending Episcopalian Sunday school, he does so because his mother has married an Episcopalian man who becomes like a father to him; when Owen begins to attend Episcopalian Sunday school, he does so because, as he says, the Catholic Church has insulted his father and mother. John does not know what this "insult" was. Owen and John discuss religion, and John realizes that Owen has very specific and passionately held convictions.
There are two schools in Gravesend--the prestigious academy and the public high school. Owen intends to attend the high school, but John's mother wants Owen to go to the academy, because he is a brilliant student. Owen refuses, saying that public schools are for people like him.
One day Owen tells John that his mother went to the Meanys' house to bring up the subject of the academy with Owen's parents. Owen knows this because he recognized John's mother's perfume in the living room; he has a terrible crush on John's mother, as do all of John's friends. Then John remembers the last Little League season he and Owen spent together, when they were eleven. In one game, in the last inning, Owen Meany is allowed to swing at a pitch for the first time. He hits a hard foul ball over the fence; John's mother, who is waiting to take John and Owen home, is struck in the head. John's mother is dead almost as soon as she hits the ground. In the chaos that follows, someone throws a coat over John's head, and the chief of police argues with the Little League coach about the ball. Owen is gone; John suspects that he took the ball with him.
CHAPTER 2: THE ARMADILLO
John remembers his mother, whose name was Tabitha, but who was almost always called Tabby. He describes her manner of dressing, which accentuated her good looks without showing them off, and her touchability. Everyone wanted to touch her, he says, and she was catlike about being touched, either freezing, ducking, or luxuriating in the contact. He does not remember her flirting with men, but imagines that she must have done so on the Boston and Maine railway line, which took her into Boston for her singing lessons. It was on this line that she met John's father, and on this line that she met the man she married, Dan Needham, the man for whom she took John away from the Congregationalist Church and to the Episcopalian.
John remembers the night when his mother told the family about Dan Needham. John is six; it is 1948. John's mother simply announces, at dinner, that she has met another man on "the good old Boston and Maine." After reassuring Mrs. Wheelwright that she is not pregnant again, and telling John that the man is not his father, she tells them that he is a drama teacher who is applying for a job at Gravesend Academy; he is also a Harvard graduate, a fact that John's grandmother finds impressive. Suddenly, the doorbell rings, and Dan Needham appears in the foyer. A rumpled, red-headed, young-looking man, he is very different from the attractive young men John's mother usually dates. Where most of those men are awkward and diffident around John, Dan Needham gives him a mysterious paper bag. He tells John not to open it, but to alert him if it moves. As the adults talk in the living room, John is unable to resist the temptation, and opens the bag. He sees a horrible monster, and screams. Dan laughingly tells John's mother, "I told you he'd open the bag!"
The monster, it turns out, is merely a stuffed armadillo, a prop Dan was using in his lecture at Gravesend Academy. He has just been hired as a history professor, focusing on the way drama and performance distinguish different historical epochs. He gives the armadillo to John to keep, and John cherishes it. Owen also loves it, and the two of them create a game in which one of them hides it in the John's grandmother's attic, and the other has to find it.
John remembers his childhood visits to his mother's sister Martha and her husband Alfred Eastman in the White Mountains in northern New Hampshire. On the train, he always eats too many tea sandwiches, and is forced to use the terrifying restroom--simply a hole cut out in the bottom of the car--before they reach Sawyer Depot. John is simultaneously mesmerized and frightened by his three cousins, Noah (three years older than John), Simon (two years older), and Hester (less than a year older), who are used to a far rougher and more athletic life than John is. He goes skiing with them, but where they are expert skiers, he is a novice, constantly falling down. Hester, who is obsessed with the idea of sex, warns him that he will make himself sterile if he isn't careful.
John remembers waterskiing with his cousins on Loveless Lake, and playing King of the Mountain with them on great sawdust piles in Uncle Alfred's lumberyards; but he says that what really made the contests thrilling was the presexual tension he associated with Hester. Confronted with a burly, rich, masculine father and a gentle and feminine mother, constantly beaten in contests by her older brothers, Hester's only recourse, when she was slightly older, seems to have been "to intimidate every girlfriend either of them ever had and to fuck the brains out of every boy they ever knew." John thinks that Hester was the product of her environment, while Noah and Simon argue that she was born that way. Still, John says that the deck was stacked against her from the start, even before adolescence. He remembers being forced to kiss Hester as a penalty for losing games; the first time, they had to tie Hester to the bed, and later, John began losing the game on purpose.
Owen is always jealous when John goes to visit his cousins. He insists that John not take the armadillo to Sawyer Depot, and says that he should get to take it home with him while John is gone. When he carries it home, Owen brings a box stuffed with cotton to carry the armadillo home in--a box used to transport monuments by Owen's father, part of whose granite business is the selling of granite gravestones. One Thanksgiving, John's cousins come to his grandmother's house in Gravesend--80 Front Street is the address--and John tentatively introduces them to Owen Meany, fearful of what they might do to him.
Contrary to his expectations, they are awestruck by Owen's bizarre appearance and unearthly voice. They play a game in which Hester hides in the closet of John's grandmother's attic, and the others attempt to find her; the rule is that if Hester can grab the searcher's "doink" before he finds her, she wins. When Owen finds Hester, she tickles him instead of grabbing his penis, but she frightens him and he wets his pants. Humiliated, he flees the house, and John and his mother have to chase after him in the car. At last Owen agrees to return--provided that he can take a bath and wash his clothes--and they play a new game, in which Hester hides Owen and the others try to find him. Owen tells John that he thinks his cousins are not terribly wild--he says that they have simply lacked direction.
Later, after Owen's foul ball kills his mother, John remembers that day as he lies in bed trying to sleep. The morning after the accident, John wakes up to see the Meany Granite Quarry truck outside on the driveway. Owen gets out from the passenger door and leaves a large package on the doorstep of 80 Front Street, where John has spent the night rather than in his bed in the apartment his mother shared with Dan Needham. The boxes contain all of Owen's baseball cards, his most prized possessions. But now everything has changed for Owen and John about the game of baseball. John asks Dan Needham what Owen wants him to do with the cards, and Dan replies, "He wants you to give them back." John does so, and on Dan's advice, he also gives Owen the armadillo, to show him that he still loves him.
Dan says that if a thing he gave John could have such a special purpose, he would be very proud, and that is the first time John considers the idea of a designated fate--a "special purpose" in life. John remembers a recent day--January 25, 1987--when he thought of Owen Meany while celebrating the Anglican holiday of the conversion of St. Paul. He identifies with the idea of conversion, he says, because Owen Meany converted him.
After keeping it for two nights, Owen returns the armadillo, just as John returned the baseball cards. But John is outraged to find that Owen has removed the armadillo's claws; with its claws amputated, it cannot stand upright. Dan Needham explains, surprised, that Owen must be making a comment on what has happened--John, Dan, and Owen are all like the armadillo; they have all lost a part of themselves. Later, John thinks that Owen was also referring to the armless totem of Watahantowet, which represented the idea that, to Watahantowet, losing the land that became Gravesend was like losing his arms: everything has a price. According to John, what Owen intended to say with the armadillo was this: "GOD HAS TAKEN YOUR MOTHER. MY HANDS WERE THE INSTRUMENT. GOD HAS TAKEN MY HANDS. I AM GOD'S INSTRUMENT." In other words, Owen was saying that he was appointed by God to carry out a specific purpose.
As John writes his narrative--on January 30, 1987--it is snowing in Toronto, where he lives. The snow makes Toronto seem like a small New England town, almost like Gravesend. John says that he recently read a copy of Ronald Reagan's State of the Union address, which disgusted him; he describes Reaganism as having "numbed America." When Owen and John were seniors at Gravesend Academy in the '60s, Reagan was merely a politician in California, and did not understand anything about the Vietnam War, according to John. Owen, however, did understand, and he and John followed the conduct of the war very carefully. Owen understood everything, and criticized the American presence in Vietnam from the start. By 1971, John had retreated to Canada and applied for Canadian citizenship. Without explaining what he means, he says that it was Owen who enabled him to evade serving in Vietnam; he writes that Owen gave him far more than he ever took from him, "even when you consider that he took my mother."
CHAPTER 3: THE ANGEL
John relates another memory from childhood, from before his mother's death. His mother keeps a dressmaker's dummy next to her bed, which is always dressed in tasteful clothes. John's mother is an expert seamstress, and has a habit of taking clothes out from expensive stores in Boston, then copying them herself and returning them. The dummy wears the clothes while she sews. At night, John and Dan Needham occasionally mistake the dummy for John's mother. John and Owen like to dress the dummy up, and occasionally Owen invents an outfit that John's mother actually wears. But no one can convince her to wear the one red dress in her closet--it is a beautiful dress, but it is the only garment she owns that is not white or black. The only time she ever wore the red dress was during a production of Angel Street by the Gravesend Players, which Dan resurrected after moving to town; she played the role of a wife driven insane by her evil husband, and Dan played the evil husband. Mrs. Walker played the flirtatious maid, and Mr. Fish--a neighbor of Mrs. Wheelwright who was at the time in mourning over the death of his dog Sagamore, who was killed by a diaper truck--played the hero. Owen and John watched every production; it was the only time John's mother ever acted with the Gravesend Players.
One night, Owen spends the night at John's, and wakes up with a fever. When he goes to tell John's mother, he stops short, and hurries back to John's room, crying that he has seen an angel by the bed. John creeps back to the room with him and sees the silhouette of the dummy; he assumes that Owen has mistaken it for an angel, but Owen insists that the angel was on the other side of the bed. John feels Owen's fever and thinks that he hallucinated the angel, but Owen is adamant. Later, after Owen's baseball kills John's mother, Owen will become vocal about his belief in predestination, the idea that every action and every person serves a specific purpose and that every deed is fated. He believes that, when he saw the angel in John's mother's room, he disturbed it, and therefore interfered with the scheme of fate. After the baseball kills John's mother, Owen refers to it as "fated," and John realizes that he believed the angel was not a guardian angel--it was the Angel of Death, and he deterred it from its work.
On the night in question, Owen sleeps with John's mother, and remains vigilant in case the angel should come back. Hours later, Mrs. Wheelwright (John's grandmother) bursts into the room to scold her daughter for leaving the tap running--though it was actually John's mistake--and Owen, believing her to be an apparition, screams hideously, waking half the neighborhood. For years after that, John writes, Owen insisted that John's grandmother had wailed "like a banshee." John had always thought the description ludicrous--after all, Owen made the most noise--but one day Dan Needham looked the word up, and found that a banshee is literally a premonition of a loved one's death. Perhaps, John says, Owen was not so preposterous after all.
John remembers a time when his grandmother actually consented to act in a play directed by Dan Needham; she played an English matriarch in Somerset Maugham's The Constant Wife. She performed marvelously, and brought the house down. But despite the acceptance Dan found in the Wheelwright family and in the academic community of Gravesend Academy, it was four years before he and Tabby were married. John speculates about why they waited so long, but ultimately cannot settle on an answer. Perhaps his mother was overly proper, since she was so reckless with the fling that produced him, or perhaps Dan demanded to know more about John's father and John's mother would not tell him.
Whatever it was, it was not the disapproval of the couple's two religious communities; the Episcopalians and the Congregationalists practically competed to win the couple over. John vastly preferred the Congregationalists, whose pastor, Reverend Louis Merrill, was a serious, doubtful, educated man, to the Episcopalians, whose rector, Reverend Dudley Wiggin, was a Bible-thumping ex-pilot. Owen is not impressed with Rev. Merrill; he says that a preacher should not have so much intellectual doubt. But the Wheelwrights, and most of the Gravesend community, love him; he is a frequent speaker at the Academy. They also pity him for his family: his wife, a California girl, wilted in New Hampshire, and their children were sickly. The Rev. Wiggin's wife was a brash redhead called Barb, and his children were oafish athletes. Nevertheless, Dan and Tabby chose to join the Episcopalians, and John began his long tenure of attending Sunday school class with Owen Meany. However, the wedding was held at Hurd's Church, the nondenominational chapel at Gravesend Academy, and the ceremony was conducted by both Rev. Merrill and Rev. Wiggin. A year later, John's mother's funeral was held in the same church.
At the wedding, both ministers shared their thoughts on love with the congregation. Afterward, the wedding party retired to a reception at Mrs. Wheelwright's house at 80 Front Street. Here, Simon commented on Owen's dark suit, saying that he looked like he was attending a funeral. Hester angrily defended Owen. During the party, Hester went into the bushes to pee because she wanted to avoid the long line at the ladies' room, and she handed Owen her panties, which he embarrassedly stuffed into his jacket pocket. Owen's wedding present for Dan and John's mother was a granite marker that he made at his father's tombstone factory, reading "JULY 1952," the month of the wedding. As the couple prepared to drive away for their honeymoon, a sudden storm arose, and it began to hail. Owen rode away with the newlyweds, who agreed to drop him off at his house. Unbeknownst to everyone but Hester, Owen escaped with her panties still in his pocket. Her thin yellow dress soaked and clinging to her, her plight was visible to everyone, and she bolted for the house.
John writes that Mr. Chickering, the Little League coach who ordered Owen to swing at the ball that killed John's mother, is now wasting away with Alzheimer's disease. John remembers that Mr. Chickering wept at his mother's funeral, feeling responsible for her death. John thinks about Harry Hoyt, who was walked before Owen batted--had he been the last out, Owen would have never gone to the plate. Harry was later killed in Vietnam, and his mother became a war protester in Gravesend. Buzzy Thurston, who reached base on an error before Owen batted, did not attend the funeral. Later, he evaded Vietnam through drug use--he was declared psychologically unfit to serve--but he was killed in a car accident caused by his drinking.
The graveyard in Gravesend was near the high school, and at the burial of Tabby, Rev. Merrill's voice was interrupted by the sound of a high school baseball practice. Many of the mourners cover their ears with their hands, and Owen repeats "I'M SORRY! I'M SORRY!" Afterward, John narrates, his Aunt Martha, Mrs. Wheelwright, and Dan each tell John that he is welcome to live with them; he elects to spend some of his time with Dan--who legally adopted him when he married Tabby--and some with his grandmother at 80 Front Street. He takes a walk with Hester, who tells him that Owen feels even worse than he does. They walk to the cemetery, where they find Owen praying over the grave, his father waiting in the Granite Company truck nearby. Owen says that they must go to the apartment and take the dummy, or Dan will stare at it and make himself miserable. They retrieve it from an uncomplaining Dan, and Owen decides that he should keep the dummy himself. The dummy is wearing the red dress.
As he writes his story, on February 1, 1987, in Toronto, John says that he has come to believe in angels. He says that this belief has not much helped him--he was not even elected to a parish office during the last council session at church, though he has held many offices in the past. He says that he was irritated by the service, too, which emphasized the beatitudes of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. He does not like the new canon, either. But the psalm rang true: "Leave off from wrath, and let go displeasure: / fret not thyself, else shalt thou be moved to do evil." John says that he himself has felt wrath, and been moved to do evil--as we shall see.
CHAPTER 4: THE LITTLE LORD JESUS
The Christmas of 1953, the first Christmas since John's mother died, is a gloomy holiday. For the first time in John's memory, he does not go to Sawyer Depot, because his grandmother believes that that would make them all too lonely for John's mother. Instead, eleven-year-old John and Owen root around in the Gravesend Academy dormitories (Dan has a master key), while Dan works on the Gravesend Players' production of A Christmas Carol, starring Mr. Fish as Mr. Scrooge. Owen and John are to act in the church Christmas pageant; Owen is adamant that he not be forced to play the Announcing Angel, a role he has felt humiliated by for the past several Christmases.
Rev. Wiggin and Barb have a unique approach to a Christmas pageant: they dress the littlest children in absurd turtledove costumes, let the prettiest girl play Mary, and keep a huge supply of infants backstage in case the Christ Child begins to bawl. Over the Christmas holiday, as Owen and John snoop through the empty rooms of vacationing boys, they learn where to look for pornography--and when they discover it, it inevitably lowers Owen's opinion of the room's occupant. The experience is depressing, the numbing sameness of each boy's belongings, each boy's sense of homesickness, contributing to Owen's belief that dormitories are "EVIL." In one boy's room, they discover condoms, which Owen gleefully announces are banned by the Catholic Church. They take turns putting one on their "tiny penises," which John sees for Owen as an act of religious rebellion--one more proof that he has escaped the Catholic Church, one more repayment for the unknown insult the church dealt his mother and father.
At the meeting to cast parts for the Christmas pageant, Owen sternly declares to Barb Wiggin that he will under no circumstances play the Announcing (or Descending) Angel. John is cast as Joseph, but no one will step forward to be the angel. Suddenly, a fat boy named Harold Crosby tips over backward and falls out of his chair--an accident mistaken by the rector for volunteering. Harold protests that he is afraid of heights, but the rector is unflinching: Harold will play the angel. Owen convinces the group that he should be allowed to play the Christ Child, to eliminate the need for droves of babies being passed about backstage. In this way, Owen Meany is chosen to play the Baby Jesus.
Using a textual argument based on the carol "Away in a Manger," Owen successfully lobbies to have the crib removed from the manger scene ("...no crib for a bed..."), and constructs himself a regal nest amid the hay. Mary Beth Baird, the Virgin Mary, desperately wants to be able to show her affection for the Baby Jesus, and Owen suggests that she could bow to him. She does, and the rector decides to keep this in the pageant.
Writing in 1987, John says that he prefers to go to his current church, Grace Church, for services on the weekdays, when there are no sermons and no families with children. He describes the usual experience of sitting behind a family with children dragged to church against their will. Again, he criticizes the clergy at his church--one of them is a racist, one of them wears faded clothes. He says that he does not go to the Christmas pageants at Grace Church because the Christmas pageant of 1953 was all the Nativity he needed: he has already witnessed the miracle.
In 1953, Dan's production of A Christmas Carol is stymied by poor performances by the amateur actors; the Scrooge of the show, Mr. Fish, frequently drops by to complain. John writes that though Mr. Fish lived next door to 80 Front Street, he never knew Mr. Fish's occupation--to John, he was all neighbors, everyone who rakes their lawn and plays fetch with their dog nearby. John remembers the day Mr. Fish's dog, Sagamore, died; Mr. Fish likes to lure John and Owen over to play football, and one day Owen succeeds in kicking a punt a very long way. Sagamore runs after the ball, and collides with a diaper truck bringing a delivery to a young family on the street. Sagamore is buried in Mrs. Wheelwright's rosebushes; Owen presides over the ceremony, providing the little group of mourners with sorrowful candles. The Rev. Merrill appears, but he stutters and cannot say anything, so Owen recites the "I am the resurrection and the life" verse. This was before John's mother's death, and she takes Owen's hand.
In 1953, John visits Owen's peculiar house only rarely, though he notices the tortured Nativity scene on the mantle: the Virgin Mary has a mutilated face, and the Baby Jesus is actually missing. John lets it slip to Owen's parents that Owen is playing the Christ Child in the pageant, and they seem stunned. Mrs. Meany even tells John that she is sorry for his mother's death--it is the first time the laconic woman has ever spoken to him. John's mother's dummy is still in Owen's room, and John sees Mrs. Meany scrutinizing it closely. John and Owen pass under a railway bridge just as a blazing fast train--the Flying Yankee--passes over it. John thinks it is a lucky coincidence, but Owen does not believe in coincidence, only in the rigid machinations of destiny.
One night at dinner, John announces to his grandmother--in the company of Lydia, Ethel (Lydia's replacement), and Germaine (the clumsy maid hired to care for Lydia)--that Owen does not intend to visit the Boston singing teacher to try to change his voice. He believes that his voice comes from God, and is intended to serve a special purpose. Mrs. Wheelwright contemptuously replies that it does not come from God, it comes from his having breathed too much granite dust as a baby, which also stunted his growth.
One day, Owen and John are exploring the rooms at Waterhouse Hall when they hear another master key turn in the lock, and the Brinker-Smiths enter. The Brinker-Smiths are a young faculty couple with a new set of twins, and Ginger Brinker-Smith is a legendary object of lust among Gravesend Academy students. Owen and John hide, and the Brinker-Smiths proceed to have sex gleefully on the dormitory bed, enjoying their mischievous retreat from their children. Owen and John are shocked, and Owen is almost offended. "SEX," he says, "MAKES PEOPLE CRAZY."
Owen continues to orchestrate events, just as he has done for the Christmas pageant. When the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come quits the Gravesend Players' show, Owen convinces Dan to let him play the part. At rehearsal, he terrifies the other cast members--no one laughs once, and Mr. Fish actually forgets his lines. When Owen next comes to 80 Front Street, even Mrs. Wheelwright is respectful of him. After all, Owen is now the Lord Jesus and the Ghost of the Future, all in one.
CHAPTER 5: THE GHOST OF THE FUTURE
Owen's performance as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come wins rave reviews in the Gravesend News-Letter and makes a huge impression on the audience, but Dan worries that Owen's solemn stage presence casts a pallor over A Christmas Carol's happy ending. When Owen comes down with a cold, Dan is encouraged, thinking that perhaps a sniffling ghost will be less terrifying to the children. John, however, is nervous about the effect Owen's sneezing will have on his portrayal of the Baby Jesus in the Christmas pageant.
The morning of the pageant, Owen and John walk to church with Mr. Fish, who is not a churchgoer, but who has been so overshadowed by Owen's performance in A Christmas Carol that he cannot resist going to watch. On the way, they meet Dan, who walks with them. Outside the church, the foursome encounters a miserable-looking Rev. Merrill, who has come for the pageant, along with Rev. Wiggin and Barb. Inside, Owen insists that, before he is wrapped in his swaddling clothes, he be wrapped in his "lucky scarf"--a gift to him from John's mother. Barb Wiggin and Owen argue while the children are assembling and preparing for the pageant, and at last Barb picks Owen up to carry him to his spot in the manger. She presses him against her breasts, and gives him a kiss on the mouth "for luck"; when she steps away, John can see that Owen has an erection protruding through his swaddling clothes: the Baby Jesus has an erection. John thinks that this was an act of intentional cruelty on the part of Barb Wiggin, teaching Owen the lesson that "someone you hate can give you a hard-on."
As the pageant begins, however, Owen regains control of himself. He directs a withering gaze at Barb Wiggin as the show begins, frightening her and causing her to drop Harold Crosby, the announcing angel, too quickly from the ceiling; after a ten-foot free fall, Harold's rope catches him, but he has forgotten his lines. Owen whispers them to him, but the entire congregation can hear as well. When Owen is revealed as the Christ Child, the "pillar of light" spotlight shines down on the manger scene; the heat is so intense that many of the children in animal costumes begin to faint. Mary Beth Baird, the Virgin Mary, becomes so overwhelmed that she dives onto Owen, who can only shoo her away by goosing her. He directs a contemptuous glare into the audience that quiets the murmuring; but then he sees his parents in the crowd, his mother sobbing incomprehensibly, and is plunged into a rage. He cries out, "WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING HERE?" The Meanys leave, and Owen directs Mary Beth and John (playing Joseph, of course) to carry him out of the church. As they march down the center aisle, the animals begin following behind them, forming a spontaneous procession off the stage. The children emerge in the snowy outdoors, and John bundles Owen into the cab of his parents' truck. Owen remarks, inscrutably, "IT'S A GOOD THING I WORE MY LUCKY SCARF."
Breaking away from his narrative of the Christmas of 1953, John describes a conversation he had with the rector of his church in Canada on February 4, 1987. Enraged about President Reagan's nuclear weapons policies, John launched into a diatribe against America and Americans; the rector, Canon Mackie, implied that what John was really upset about was the vestry elections, during which John was not even nominated for a position. Canon Mackie says that John's frequently-voiced anti-American opinions strike many of the Canadian parishioners of Grace Church, ironically, as quintessentially American. John continues to complain about nuclear arms proliferation, and Canon Mackie says that John lives in the past.
Remembering the Nativity of 1953, John writes that the vision of Owen Meany as Christ has replaced the actual Christmas story in his own mind: "a vision of the little Lord Jesus as a born victim, born raw, born bandaged, born angry and accusing; and wrapped so tightly that he could not bend his knees at all." He remembers the children standing in the snow after Owen drives away, fighting the exiting congregation to get back into the church. In the chaos--the congregation is baffled, Mr. Fish is commenting excitedly on the "primitivism" of the display, the children are milling about--John goes to get his and Owen's clothes. Suddenly Mr. Fish notices that Harold Crosby is still dangling up above the stage on his rope pulley; he has been abandoned by the enraged Barb Wiggin. Dan operates the machine to get him down. Barb Wiggin angrily tells John that Owen is not to be allowed back into the church until he speaks to her first. John, knowing that this declaration will cause Owen to cease coming to church altogether, warns Dan.
Angrily, Dan marches Harold Crosby over to Barb Wiggin, and reminds her that she left a young boy hanging twenty feet above a concrete floor. He tells her that she has no authority in the church, and that Owen is to be allowed back whenever he wishes to come; if Barb drops the matter, Dan says, he will not tell the Vestry members about Barb's oversight with Harold. Needless to say, Barb agrees. On the other side of the church, Mr. Fish is praising Rev. Wiggin for the success and inventiveness of the performance.
Thinking about Christmas Eve, John misses his mother; he has never spent Christmas Eve without her, and he has never spent Christmas Eve in Gravesend--they always traveled to Sawyer Depot to spend the holidays with Aunt Martha and his cousins. On Christmas Eve, John escorts his grandmother to the final production of A Christmas Carol. Backstage, he asks Owen about his severe behavior toward his parents at the Christmas pageant, and Owen refers vaguely to the ancient insult his parents received at the hands of the Catholic Church, implying that this old wound had something to do with his displeasure to see them at the Episcopalian pageant. In his seat as the play opens, John notices many people in the audience who were also at the baseball game in which Owen Meany caused his mother's death. John remembers that just before his mother was hit with the foul ball, she noticed someone in the stands and waved to that person. He tries to think who it could have been, and imagines for a moment that it might have been his father.
Gazing through the crowd, he is taken back to the memory of the baseball game, and sees every person as they looked in the bleachers that summer day. When Owen comes onstage, however, John watches the play unfold. Owen gives his usual harrowing performance as the ghost, but when he leads Scrooge to the graveyard and reads the name on the gravestone, he faints. He comes to just before Dan closes the curtain, and he leaps to his feet and screams. Mr. Fish, the hapless Scrooge, falls over his own grave. He tries to continue the performance, but Owen refuses to approach the grave; he hurries offstage, and John finds him sobbing in the makeup room, claiming to have seen his own name, "Owen Meany," inscribed on Scrooge's grave.
Rev. Merrill drives Owen and John home. When John sets foot inside 80 Front Street, he can immediately tell that something is wrong--at first he thinks the house has been pillaged by robbers. He hears the young maid Germaine sobbing in the secret passageway, and learns from her that Lydia has died. When Mrs. Wheelwright returns, she insists that Owen somehow foresaw Lydia's death and confused it with a premonition of his own. John is forced to sleep in a room with Germaine, who is frightened and superstitious. Suddenly, and strangely, he finds himself consumed with lust for Germaine, and even thinks about climbing into bed with her. Only eleven years old and unfamiliar with the idea of lust, John simply knows that his feeling is wrong, and imagines that it must have come from his father.
When Germaine falls asleep, John hurries into the kitchen to call Owen and tell him what has happened. Owen agrees with John that his mother might have been waving at his father before she was killed, and agrees to help him look for his father. On the subject of lust, Owen is supportive, and tells John that he is right to think lust comes from his father--and says that it might help him find his father, as well. But Owen disagrees with the idea that his vision at the play was a premonition of Lydia's death--he says that his vision included "the whole thing." John realizes that this means Owen saw a date under his name on the headstone. He asks Owen what the date was, but Owen denies there was a date. John wants to cry, because it is the first time Owen has ever lied to him.
CHAPTER 6: THE VOICE
After Lydia's death, John's grandmother decides to acquire a television for 80 Front Street, though for years she had steadfastly resisted owning one. She allows John and Owen to watch whatever programs they wish, except the Late Show--Mrs. Wheelwright believes that they should have a reasonable bedtime. Mrs. Wheelwright watches the television constantly, and keeps up a running, scathing commentary on the banality of every show--so much so that when John and Owen watch without her, they find the TV boring. Thus 1954 begins around the television set; Owen and Mrs. Wheelwright, for all their differences, are united in their love for Liberace, whose show broadcasts ten times a week. In Mrs. Wheelwright's case, Liberace is the only performer she can tolerate.
John finds this love of Liberace so baffling that he complains to Dan, who tells him not to be so snobbish--Mrs. Wheelwright is getting old, and if she happens to like Liberace, so be it. When John complains about Owen, Dan tells him to be patient: when Owen is old enough to enter Gravesend Academy, he says, the academic challenges he will confront will discipline his mind. When the time comes to attend the academy, Mrs. Wheelwright agrees to buy Owen's clothes and he receives a full scholarship; but when John, a poor student, is asked to spend a year in public high school before coming to the academy, Owen decides to spend a year at public school with him, so that they will remain in the same grade.
Around Thanksgiving of 1954, Noah is attending the academy, and Hester comes to Gravesend to visit; she watches television for the first time, and is just as critical as Owen and Mrs. Wheelwright. Owen watches a movie about a nun, and gets what he calls "THE SHIVERS"--he despises Catholicism so deeply that nuns frighten him. He and John throw chestnuts at a statue of Mary Magdalene, and they are chased away by nuns, whom Owen calls "PENGUINS." By 1957, the boys are almost ready to enter the academy; they spend many nights watching Gravesend Players productions, trying to remember exactly who in the audience was at the baseball game where John's mother was killed. In the meantime, Owen gives John this advice about searching for his father: "EVERY TIME YOU GET A BONER, TRY TO THINK IF YOU REMIND YOURSELF OF ANYONE YOU KNOW."
On the subject of lust, John writes that he regretted not seeing more of Hester during those years; now that Simon and Noah are both at the academy, he had hoped for more frequent visits. Owen reminds John that Hester is his cousin, and says that it is probably best that she is beyond his reach.
Writing in 1987, John comments that Liberace, who was so beloved by Owen and Mrs. Wheelwright, has died; and he notes that it is Palm Sunday. He recalls that Owen hated Palm Sunday, and discusses how it is celebrated at the Bishop Strachan School, where he is a teacher. Writing later, on Easter, he describes the service at Grace Church, and thinks about Owen's responses to Easter.
John returns to his narrative. In the summer of 1958, he and Owen get their driver's licenses--Owen a month before John. They drive to nearby beaches and look at girls, and John realizes that in a strange way, Owen is attractive to women. He is always in command of a situation, and despite his diminutive stature, he has a developed musculature from working in his father's granite yards. He begins to smoke Camels, and the boys discuss the breasts of the girls in their grade.
In the fall of 1958, Owen and John enter Gravesend Academy. Owen immediately begins to thrive; the boys dub him "Sarcasm Master," and he earns the nickname "The Voice" for his essays in the student paper, The Grave. Owen prints all his text in upper-case letters, and uses the byline "THE VOICE." By Christmas, The Voice is an institution. Owen's status rises so high that he even invites Hester to the Senior Dance, to the horror of Noah and Simon: "She'll fuck our whole class and leave you looking at the chandelier." At the dance, however, Hester and Owen are inseparable, and John is consumed with a crushing envy of Owen that borders on resentment--especially when Noah and Simon begin speculating on whether Hester and Owen had sex after the dance, as many students believe. Over the summer, Owen works in the quarry, and John gives tours on the academy campus; they cruise the beach, and actually succeed in picking up girls from time to time. Young punks tend to pick on Owen, but he breaks one young man's pinky, and develops a reputation as untouchable. The next year, the boys return to the academy, while Hester begins attending the University of New Hampshire. Owen gains even more prestige because he is dating a college girl.
As the school year progresses, Owen develops an interest in basketball; despite his size, he plays in pick-up games, and becomes obsessed with the idea of performing a slam dunk. He forces John to practice a move with him where Owen leaps for the basket, and John lifts him up and holds him above the rim so he can stuff the ball. John complains, and Owen reminds him that John used to enjoy lifting Owen above his head during Sunday school class. Owen insists that the move has some sort of special purpose in his life, and he and John spend most of the Christmas of '59 practicing it.
In May of 1987, John writes another diatribe against Ronald Reagan, saying that the president does not care about remaining within the law. He says that he is tired, and describes the frustrating experience of trying to teach Tess of the D'Urbervilles to a twelfth grade English class; he remembers struggling with Tess in his tenth grade year. John says that Owen taught him how to really read a book, using Tess as an example. Returning to his narrative, he describes how, in the winter of '59, Rev. Merrill comes to teach religion at the academy; teaching a philosophy that holds doubt as an essential component of faith, he is involved in a number of intellectual debates with Owen, who as always, has the last word.
An academy search committee finally finishes a long search for a new headmaster; they hire Randy White, a businessman-type from an exclusive day school in Lake Forest, Illinois. As The Voice, Owen is appalled by White, and alleges that he is an anti-Semitic racist. Owen thinks the headmaster should be a man with a strong educational background; Mr. White thinks a headmaster should simply "make decisions." That summer, the summer of 1960, the boys are eighteen, and they register for the draft; at the time, it seems like an innocuous occurrence. They also practice the slam-dunk maneuver, which Owen calls "THE SHOT," incessantly, trying to successfully complete it in as short a time as possible--eight seconds, seven, six, five; but under four seconds is almost impossible. In the fall, Owen runs afoul of the new headmaster by opposing his authoritarian policies in his column, and he holds a mock Kennedy- Nixon election for the students. Kennedy, whom Owen supports passionately, wins in a landslide, but he predicts that the vote in November will be much closer. Mr. White is a Republican and a Nixon-supporter, and he appoints himself to be the faculty adviser of The Grave. Owen has made a powerful enemy.
But Owen is thrilled when Kennedy wins the election, and moved inexpressibly by his inaugural speech: "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country" becomes a kind of directive for Owen, who now believes that Kennedy is a kind of political and religious savior. He says that Kennedy is a bringer of light; and John, writing in 1987 and so full of rage against the Reagan administration that reading a newspaper sends him into a frenzy, agrees with him wholeheartedly.
CHAPTER 7: THE DREAM
When Owen and John are nineteen-year-old seniors at Gravesend Academy, Owen tells John what he meant by removing the claws from John's armadillo after John's mother's death in 1953: "GOD HAS TAKEN YOUR MOTHER. MY HANDS WERE THE INSTRUMENT. GOD HAS TAKEN MY HANDS. I AM GOD'S INSTRUMENT." John is so surprised that he drops Owen as he catches him for "The Shot." At the time, John thinks Owen is a lunatic for believing himself to be the instrument of God. While practicing The Shot in the academy gym over the Christmas holiday of 1961, they argue fiercely about it. But after their argument in the high school gym, they successfully perform The Shot in under four seconds for the first time. Owen triumphantly announces that "IT JUST TAKES A LITTLE MORE FAITH."
They also argue that year about college: John plans to attend the state university in New Hampshire, while Owen could easily get a full scholarship to Harvard or Yale. Owen wants John to at least apply to a better school, but John is certain he would be rejected. Owen insists that they stay together, but John refuses to let Owen deny himself the chance to go to a better school simply to stay with John in New Hampshire--even though Owen has been given a prestigious scholarship to the University of New Hampshire as the most outstanding high school student in the state. Owen is the shoo-in valedictorian of his class, and is now in charge of The Grave--he even uses the editorial copy machine to make fake IDs for his classmates.
As seniors in the academy, they are granted the privilege of traveling to Boston by train two afternoons a week. Most of the students use this privilege to meet up with former Gravesend students now at Harvard, and to drink and go to strip clubs. But Owen takes John to a clothing store called Jerrold's, whose sign matches the tag on John's mother's red dress--the dress she claimed to have kept only because the clothing store burned down before she could return it. Owen is on a mission to obtain more information about John's mother, and also, possibly, his still-unknown father; he shows a picture of Tabby Wheelwright to the owner of Jerrold's, who identifies her as "The Lady in Red," who used to sing at a local supper club in the '40s and '50s. John, shocked by this revelation--his mother lied to him--goes numbly with Owen to the home of her former singing teacher, the man she had traveled to Boston to study under, Graham McSwiney. Owen gains an audience with this illustrious man by pretending that he wants his vocal cords to be examined, in the hope that his shrill, nasal voice might someday deepen. When Mr. McSwiney examines him, he discovers that Owen's Adam's apple is in the position of a constant scream, elevated into his throat. But Owen says that God gave him his voice for a reason, and shows the man a picture of John's mother. Mr. McSwiney recognizes her as The Lady in Red, as well, and says that he did teach her--she was a pretty-voiced but fairly lazy student--and find her the job at The Orange Grove. He gives them the names of some men who used to be associated with The Orange Grove before it closed, but he is unable to help them in any other way.
John frequently interrupts his narrative of 1961 with increasingly hostile attacks on America and the Reagan administration, which in July of 1987 is embroiled in the Iran-Contra scandal. He begins reading The New York Times, though it disgusts him, and longs to be invited to a friend's summer home for a retreat. He says that politics is like junk food: when he is eating a cheeseburger, he cannot concentrate on any other taste, and when he is thinking about politics, his anger blinds him to every other pursuit. His anger consistently makes him think of Vietnam, and he rages at length against that war, mentioning innumerable figures, dates, facts, and references. He remembers how he, Owen, and Hester spent their New Year's Eves from 1962 to 1968, noting during each year how many troops were in Vietnam and how many were killed; every year, Hester passes the stroke of midnight by vomiting after drinking too much. At last, John receives the invitation to his friend's home, and goes eagerly to a long-awaited vacation.
Interspersed with anti-Reagan diatribes, the narrative of the '60s continues piecemeal. For Christmas in 1961, Mrs. Wheelwright gives Owen a diary, and he begins to write in it regularly--he gushes about John F. Kennedy, and also writes extremely fatalistic prophecies about his own future: "I KNOW WHEN I'M GOING TO DIE." In 1961, John is not allowed to see the diary, but the 1987 John who is narrating the story has seen it, and occasionally provides glimpses.
Owen has continued to alienate Randy White, the head of the school, and his problems worsen dramatically as his senior year nears its close. A rich, cynical student named Larry Lish tells Owen that John F. Kennedy has been sleeping with Marilyn Monroe, a pronouncement that infuriates Owen. When Larry's mother Mitzy, a well-connected socialite, confirms the rumor for Owen, he is so upset, and she bullies him so shamelessly, that he sexually propositions her simply to shut her up. But she reports him to Mr. White, who uses the incident in an attempt to expel Owen from Gravesend Academy; in the end, faculty support keeps Owen in the school, but he is on probation, and any wrongdoing will result in his dismissal. In the meantime, Owen is forced to endure sessions with Dr. Dolder, a psychologist from Zurich whom Owen considers a reprehensible idiot. He also consults with Rev. Merrill, whose classes he has continued to take--he sometimes talks to Rev. Merrill about the afterlife, he says, but mostly he tells Rev. Merrill about Dr. Dolder and Dr. Dolder about Rev. Merrill.
As a scholarship student to the academy, Owen has a term-time job working as a waiter to the faculty table in the cafeteria; he is forced to arrive at school an hour before breakfast to help prepare the kitchen. One frigid New Hampshire morning, Owen discovers that his parking spot has been taken up by Dr. Dolder's Volkswagen Beetle: whenever Dr. Dolder drinks too much after a party at Mr. White's, he inevitably leaves the Beetle there. Angry and frustrated, Owen recruits the basketball team to move the Beetle into the school auditorium, where it will be found on the stage for morning meeting. He then parks in front of a different dormitory, pleased with his scheme. But the headmaster finds out about the prank before the meeting begins, and recruits a group of faculty members to help him carry the car back out the door. Unfortunately, the teachers are not as strong as the basketball team, and they roll it from side to side, smashing its windows and mirrors. When Mr. White tries to steer it down the stairs, it careens out of control, overturning and pinning Mr. White inside. Furious, the headmaster--who is certain Owen Meany is responsible--becomes even more hostile to Owen. When Larry Lish is caught buying alcohol with a fake ID supplied by Owen, Owen is immediately expelled--despite the fact that he has long since ceased making the fake IDs, spurred to do so by Kennedy's charge to act with renewed social faith.
Owen calls Mrs. Wheelwright to apologize for letting her down--he considers her his benefactor, since she buys his clothes--and asks her to tell John and Dan to make the morning meeting the next day. Terrified about what Owen might do, and worried about his chances to get into college now that he has been expelled from the academy, John and Dan spend all night searching for him, calling both Hester and his parents to no avail. When they reach the auditorium at the academy early in the morning, they are stunned to discover that Owen has somehow removed the giant statue of Mary Magdalene from in front of the Catholic school and bolted it to the stage in front of the podium, first removing its arms and its head. Headless, the statue mutely pleads with the audience; armless, it offers blunt supplication. Horrified, Dan rushes to find Rev. Merrill, hoping to learn the name of the head of the Catholic school and to intervene before charges are pressed. At Rev. Merrill's, he finds Owen, who simply asks the reverend to say a prayer for him at the morning meeting. Dan is troubled to hear Rev. Merrill ask Owen if he has had "the dream" again--a question that makes Owen sob. Neither Dan nor John know what dream he is referring to.
At the meeting, the students are so stunned by the maimed statue that they sit in silence; no one even laughs. Rev. Merrill asks the students to pray silently for Owen Meany, and when Mr. White attempts to disrupt the proceeding--first by physically trying to lift the statue, then by demanding that the prayer end at once--the reverend defies him, and Mr. White leaves. John says that Mr. White is finished: he is dismissed as the headmaster following a no confidence vote from the faculty. Owen is not allowed to graduate from Gravesend Academy, but the graduation ceremony is filled with signs and cheers for him. He obtains a diploma from the public high school, and manages to wring an acceptance from the University of New Hampshire after Harvard and Yale place heavy conditions on their scholarship offers in light of his recent disgrace. He loses his scholarship to New Hampshire, but decides to pay for the school by joining the ROTC. It is 1962, John writes, and there are only 11,300 troops in Vietnam--none of them in combat.
John writes that if he would have known about Owen's dream that day in the auditorium, or if he had read his diary, he would have prayed harder and more earnestly for Owen Meany. In explanation, he offers two snippets of Owen's diary. One is a long passage in which Owen claims to know the nature of his own death ("I KNOW WHEN I'M GOING TO DIE--AND NOW A DREAM HAS SHOWN ME HOW I'M GOING TO DIE"), and one short inscription, a copy of the vision Owen had of Scrooge's tombstone when he was playing the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come--long before he joined the army: "1LT PAUL O. MEANY, JR." "Paul" is Owen's actual first name; "1LT" is short for First Lieutenant.
CHAPTER 8: THE FINGER
Owen and John spend the summer of 1962 apart: Owen works for his father's quarry, and John works for his Uncle Alfred's lumberyard in Sawyer Depot. He lives with his aunt and uncle, and works with Noah and Simon. They spend their evenings waterskiing on Loveless Lake, and Noah and Simon set John up on innumerable dates with local girls; despite their help, he is still unable to lose his virginity. Owen and Hester live together in Hester's apartment, a fact which causes Aunt Martha a great deal of distress. John finds Owen and Hester to be a depressing couple: Owen is still maddeningly fatalistic about his own death--he even wants to be assigned to Vietnam after he finishes his ROTC training--and Hester is full of inchoate rage. As the years pass, she becomes a virulent antiwar protester.
In 1987, as he narrates his story, John is vacationing with his friend Katherine Keeling on her family's island; he describes watching wildlife, fishing with Katherine's husband, and shopping with the children. But he is troubled, as well: he cannot seem to put aside his addiction to the newspapers, or his uncontrollable anger about the Reagan administration. He describes his early years in Canada, when, unlike most American expatriates fleeing Vietnam service, he is mostly concerned about fitting in to his new country. John is not in Canada to evade the draft; somehow he was able to do that before he left America, though he does not say how. He also describes overhearing Katherine's husband refer to him as a "non-practicing homosexual"; he heaps scorn upon the description, but does not directly comment on his own sexuality.
In the summer of 1962, Owen and John correspond by letters, and John escorts Simon to the emergency room after he cuts his finger working with a logging crew in the forest. In the emergency room, a car-wreck victim tells him that Marilyn Monroe has died. In a letter, Owen says that Marilyn Monroe was just like America: "A LITTLE BREATHLESS, VERY BEAUTIFUL, MAYBE A LITTLE STUPID, MAYBE A LOT SMARTER THAN SHE SEEMED." In a diatribe, he accuses John F. Kennedy of having treated Monroe as simply a cheap thrill, just as powerful politicians always treat America. Commenting on the moral tone, John writes that in 1987, Larry Lish has become a well-known journalist in New York.
In the fall of 1962, Owen and John begin their freshman year at the University of New Hampshire. For once, Owen does not excel academically; he puts most of his energy into his ROTC courses, and lets his studies slide. For his own part, John, now an English major, finds the work so easy compared to Gravesend Academy that he actually makes better grades than Owen. Both the boys live at home and commute to school--John in a new Volkswagen Beetle purchased for him by his grandmother.
In the summer of 1963, John gets a job in the monument shop at Mr. Meany's quarry, making gravestones. That November, they are at 80 Front Street when they learn about Kennedy's assassination, a development which deeply upsets Mrs. Wheelwright. In late December, John asks Hester about Owen's recurring dream, but all she will say is that she hates to watch him when he is having it. All that year, Owen works with the Catholics in Gravesend to replace the statue of Mary Magdalene--he even designs the pedestal himself. Time goes by, their college years pass, and more and more American boys are sent to Vietnam; Hester becomes angrier, and Owen works even harder to ensure his future combat assignment. John and Hester cannot understand him, and Owen and Hester argue frequently. Worried, John pays a secret visit to Owen's ROTC leader and tells him that he does not think Owen Meany is emotionally stable enough to be sent to Vietnam. But Owen tells him he has to go, because he cannot make a judgment about the war until he has seen it for himself.
After their junior year, Owen goes to Basic Training, desperate to finish first in his group. He finishes second, because he is too short to jump over the obstacle course wall. Owen begins to worry that he may not be sent to Vietnam; he seems destined for an administrative assignment, but he does not want to spend the war "behind a desk." By February of 1966, John's own situation seems perilous; he will attend graduate school at the university next year, and will thus be exempt from the draft; but the year after, the graduate deferment rule will end, and he will be eligible to be drafted. Everyone in his life encourages John to take steps to avoid the draft, but John is an indecisive twenty-four-year-old, and does not do so.
Owen and John continue to argue about Owen's desire to go to Vietnam, and at last Owen reveals to John that he believes he is destined to die there, that God wants him to go to Vietnam. He tells Owen about the dream, in which he sees himself rescuing Vietnamese children and dying in the arms of a nun. He believes that he is destined to be a hero; John thinks that he is crazy.
PARGRAPH After they graduate from college, Owen is assigned to the Adjutant General's corps and given orders to ship out to Fort Huachuca in Arizona. Disappointed and angry, Owen promises that it will be a temporary assignment. Before he leaves, he and John take a trip to Sawyer Depot, which Owen has never seen, and drive into Canada before turning back for Gravesend. In Arizona, Owen curries the favor of the commanding officer, hoping that it will help his quest to be sent to Vietnam. He works as a "Casualty Assistance Officer," which means that he escorts the bodies of dead soldiers to their families and presents them with the condolences of the United States Army.
At last John finishes his first year of graduate school--which included a stint teaching Expository Writing at Gravesend Academy--and receives orders to report to the draft board for a physical. Confused about what he should do, John receives a letter from Owen telling him to do nothing--ignore the draft board order, and wait for Owen to arrive. When Owen returns to Gravesend, he summons John to the monument shop. Here, he says that he does not believe that John could be happy in the army, and says that, as John has a gift for reading, he should be allowed to stay in America, study, and read. He gives John a great deal of beer, then reveals his intention to cut off John's right index finger with the diamond-wheel saw used for etching tombstones. Without a trigger finger, John will be ineligible for the draft.
Terrified, John places his finger on the board; he hears the saw whine, and watches the blood spatter on Owen's safety goggles. "JUST THINK OF THIS AS MY LITTLE GIFT TO YOU," says Owen Meany.
CHAPTER 9: THE SHOT
In 1987, John writes, Hester has actually succeeded in becoming a rock star. Calling herself "Hester the Molester"--Noah and Simon's childhood nickname for her--she plays a kind of seamy hard rock that garners considerable airplay on music video channels. John thinks her videos are disgusting and stupid, but his students love her. He describes bringing the girls from the Bishop Strachan School to Hester's concerts; backstage, Hester always tells the girls that John is a virgin. The girls think she is joking, but she is not. John says that he is not a "non-practicing homosexual," but that what happened to him has simply neutered him.
In Hester's defense, John says that she was badly hurt and even damaged by Owen's death; she felt that Owen left her behind. John says that Owen has not exactly left him behind: as recently as last August, John had a visitation from Owen's spirit, the second such visitation he has had since Owen's death. Visiting Dan at 80 Front Street, where Dan lives now that Mrs. Wheelwright is dead, John nearly falls down the darkened stairs in the secret passage. He feels a tiny hand catch him, and hears Owen's voice telling him not to be afraid. When he emerges from the passage, Dan is shocked to see that the roots of John's hair have turned stark white.
John remembers his grandmother's death, only two weeks before her hundredth birthday: her increasing senility led Dan and John to place her in a retirement home, where she slipped regally away. She died watching television; Dan found her with her thumb on the remote control, so that the channel continued to change. John also remembers the summer of 1967, when he began his Master's thesis on Thomas Hardy; Owen gave him a great deal of advice about Hardy's fatalism and advised John to "JUST PLUNGE IN."
During John's most recent visit to 80 Front Street (he visits Dan each August), Dan asked John again to move back from Canada and return to Gravesend, saying that Owen has been dead for twenty years, and it is time for John to forgive and forget. But John says that he cannot forget, and deflects Dan's questioning by asking questions about the theater. Writing in September, 1987, John says that a new school year has begun at the Bishop Strachan School, but that he has been troubled by a new faculty member named Eleanor Pribst, who is a sexual bully with snobbish notions about literature.
John remembers that before Owen died, Hester vowed not to attend his funeral: she told him that she would marry him and follow him anywhere, but that she refused to attend his "fucking funeral" if he insisted on going to Vietnam. In 1967, John attends the March on the Pentagon with his cousin, but because of his amputated finger he feels utterly detached; there is no chance that he will be sent to Vietnam, and he suspects (as Owen does) that most of the protesters are simply afraid to be drafted.
John remembers the time just after Owen's death, in the summer of 1968. He goes to the Meany household to speak to Mr. Meany about the funeral arrangements--he wants Rev. Merrill to perform the service--and Mr. Meany takes him into Owen's room, where he is shocked to see that Owen has attached Mary Magdalene's arms to John's mother's dressmaker's dummy. John goes through Owen's things, but does not find the baseball that killed his mother. Mr. Meany--as Mrs. Meany angrily objects in the background--tells John that Owen was not natural; he was, Mr. Meany claims, a virgin birth. He says that he told Owen this fact when Owen was about eleven--at about the same time as John's mother died--and that the infamous "great insult" the Catholic Church has paid the Meanys is to disbelieve their claim. Mr. Meany also shows John Owen's tombstone, which he claims Owen made for himself six months before he died. It is exactly like the vision of Scrooge's tombstone Owen had while acting in A Christmas Carol--and the date inscribed on the tombstone is the actual date of Owen's death.
John thinks that the Meanys are monsters for telling their eleven-year-old son that he was a virgin birth, a kind of second Christ, when it is obviously, patently, untrue. John talks to Rev. Merrill about it, and the reverend agrees--though he disagrees with John that Owen's foreknowledge of his own death constitutes a miracle, which John does believe. As they argue about faith, John suddenly remembers seeing the reverend's face in the bleachers the day his mother was killed--he feels suddenly that Owen is very close to him. The reverend blanches, and suddenly cries out in Owen's voice: "LOOK IN THE THIRD DRAWER, \RIGHT-HAND SIDE." His hand wrenches open the drawer, and John sees the baseball that killed his mother. John knows at once that the Rev. Merrill is his father, and that Merrill was the man his mother waved to just before she died.
The reverend admits the truth, and says that it was Tabby's death that shattered his faith in God. He says that when he saw her walking by the baseball field, he prayed for a split second that she would die; immediately after that, Owen's baseball struck her. Rev. Merrill believes that he killed John's mother by wishing her dead, and that, as punishment, God has turned his face away from him. John, numbly disappointed to learn that his father is the spineless Rev. Merrill, thinks that this is nonsense. That night, he retrieves his mother's dummy from Owen's bedroom, places it outside the church, and throws the baseball through the reverend's window. The reverend comes outside, sees the dummy in the red dress, and believes that it is Tabby Wheelwright come back from the grave. He falls to his hands and knees, his faith restored. The following day at Owen's service, he delivers a powerful and sincere eulogy, and his faith never wavers again.
During Owen's funeral service, the light from the hole the baseball made in the window twinkles on Owen's military medal. At the committal, a grown-up Mary Beth Baird asks John if he remembers lifting Owen above their heads in Sunday school class, and asks how Owen could possibly have been so light. John, realizing powerfully that Owen is gone, is unable to answer. He describes briefly his move to Canada, and tells about Mrs. Meany's death not long after Owen's--she burned to death when Owen's army memorial flag caught fire in her living room. Mr. Meany's granite business goes belly-up, and he begins to work as a meter-reader; everywhere he goes, he wears Owen's medal on his own chest.
At last John describes the manner of Owen Meany's death. Shortly after the Fourth of July, 1968, Owen calls John and asks him to meet him in Phoenix, where he is detained for a few days because of a military mix-up with the body of a soldier--it is Owen's job, remember, to return dead bodies to their families. John flies out to meet him, unaware that Owen believes he is going to die. Quoting Owen's diary, John says that the only thing that confused Owen was the location--he was so sure he was going to die in Vietnam, and that his death would be to save Vietnamese children, that he thinks his prophetic dream might have been simply a dream. But at the time, John has no idea of Owen's fatalistic belief. They spend a few days in a motel, drinking beer by the swimming pool, and meet the trashy family of the deceased warrant sergeant, including his machete-toting half-brother Dick Jarvits, a hulking, fifteen-year-old giant who lives for the day he will be old enough to go to Vietnam.
On the day Owen believes is appointed for his death, Major Rawls--Owen's cynical, muscular contact in Phoenix--drives them to the airport for John's return flight. While they wait, Owen sees a group deplaning: several nuns escorting a passel of Vietnamese war orphans, mostly young children. One of the nuns asks him to take the Vietnamese boys to the men's room. John accompanies them to a cramped facility with a giant sink and a deep, recessed window about ten feet from the floor.
Suddenly, Dick Jarvits appears in the doorway, a grenade in his hand. He has lived to kill the Viet Cong, and intends to practice on these children. Owen cries out to the children in Vietnamese--"Don't be afraid! Lie down!" Dick tosses the grenade into the room, and John catches it. Owen quietly asks him if he now understands why they spent so much time practicing The Shot, and leaps into the air. John passes him the grenade, lifts him up a la The Shot, and Owen buries the grenade in the window, pinning it there with his arms, dangling from the ledge.
The grenade explodes; John's eardrums begin to bleed. Owen's arms are blown off just below the elbow, and he flies into the sink. A nun rushes to him. As Dick Jarvits runs out of the men's room, Major Rawls kills him with his own machete. Owen quickly bleeds to death; his last words to John are "YOU'RE GETTING SMALLER, BUT I CAN STILL SEE YOU!" Owen is awarded a medal posthumously, and John finally accepts Owen's sense of purpose and accepts Owen as the instrument of God. Owen's voice had to be high, so the children would not be frightened of it; Owen had to be small, so that the children would trust him. Owen has lived to save the children, even to the point of learning Vietnamese--"Phoenix" is even written in his diary--and John accepts Owen Meany as a miracle, as a proof of God's existence. He believes that Owen was lifted up by supernatural forces his entire life, and that this is why he weighed so little. Mournfully, John asks God to give Owen Meany back, and pledges to keep asking.