A Prayer for Owen Meany

“Your memory is a monster; you forget, it doesn’t. It simply files things away. It keeps things from you, or hides things from you—and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!

Later, I will remember everything. In revisiting the scene of my mother’s death, I can remember everyone who was in the stands that day; I remember who wasn’t there, too—and what everyone said, and didn’t say, to me.”

This quote underscores the significant impact John’s mother’s death will have on both him and Owen. More importantly, it foreshadows John’s attempts to recreate the attendance at the game in later years, when he hypothesizes that his father was present among the spectators that day. This is one of several quotes that take on additional meaning for the reader in retrospect, much like the way memory functions as one recalls past events.

“‘He wants you to give them back,’ Dan Needham said […] Of course that’s what Owen expected of me: he gave me his baseball cards to show me how sorry he was about the accident, and how much he was hurting, too—because Owen had loved my mother almost as much as I did, I was sure, and to give me all his cards was his way of saying that he loved me enough to trust me with his famous collection. But, naturally, he wanted all the cards back!”

John, as an adult, spends much of the narrative revisiting Owen’s actions in order to determine their meaning. Owen often communicates via actions, rather than words, and the act of giving his baseball cards to John after Tabby dies is a key example. John recognizes in the moment that Owen cannot articulate his guilt and grief. In returning the baseball cards to Owen, John further conveys that he does not hold Owen responsible for his mother’s death and their friendship thus remains intact.

“I looked at Owen’s departing image with wonder: he had managed to orchestrate my mourning on the evening of my mother’s funeral. And, like my armadillo’s claws, he’d taken what he wanted—in this case, my mother’s double, her shy dressmaker’s dummy in that unloved dress. Later, I thought that Owen must have known the dummy was important; he must have foreseen that even the unloved dress would have a use—that it had a purpose.”

Here John refers to Owen’s taking the dressmaker’s dummy out of Dan’s house and keeping it for himself. John rarely understands the reason for Owen’s actions in the moment—it is only in retrospect that they gain clarity and significance.