A Prayer For Owen Meany

Name: Sophie Gentle

Study Guide Value; 120 points total

Bibliographic Information: (10 pts.)

Irving, John. A Prayer for Owen Meany. New York, New York: William Morrow, 1989.

Short Answer: Answer all parts of each question for total points. Be sure to include parenthetical citation with author’s last name and page number with your first use; after that, simply put the page number(s) in parentheses.

“As vividly as any number of stories in the Bible,” says our narrator, John Wheelwright, “Owen Meany showed us what a martyr was.” (Two part question – 5pts. each) (10 pts.)

What does it mean to be a martyr? It means to be a person who would willingly die rather than give up his or her religion.

Why does this apply to Owen? He believed so strongly in his religion that he would willingly die for it. And at the

Who is his father, and how does Owen Meany figure into this revelation. (3 pts.)

Father (1 pt.): Mr. Merrill (Pastor Merrill).

Owen Meany’s part in the revelation (2 pts.): When John was talking to Mr. Merrill, Owen supposedly spoke to John through Mr. Merrill by telling John to look in Mr. Merrill’s desk which revealed that Mr. Merrill took the baseball with killed John’s mother, revealing that he was John’s dad (552).

“Owen’s too good for this world,” says Major Rawls. Given that it’s Major Rawls making this observation—and not, say, John or Hester—explain the slight irony of this remark. (5 pts.) Major Rawls doesn’t know Owen as well as John or Hester but yet he still thinks that everything he does is too great for the world. It’s ironic because Major Rawls wasn’t a very good person yet him saying that says something amazing about Owen (611).

The following is a couplet from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “Cowards die many times before their deaths; / The valiant never taste of death but once.” It appears more than once in these pages. (6 pts.)

Explain this quotation (2