Johnny Wheelwright's 'A Prayer For Owen Meany'

In "A Prayer for Owen Meany", the narrator, Johnny Wheelwright, reminisces about a Sunday school pastime in which he and the other children would pick on Owen Meany because of Owen's diminutive stature and voice, something he could not help. However, instead of telling their Sunday school teacher, Mrs. Walker, whenever she walked into the room, he stoically dealt with it. In refusing to tell someone, he may have inadvertently led them to believe he did not mind the torment, leading them to "lift him up" in other places: hanging him by his collar on the elementary school auditorium coat tree and leaving him dangling by his jockstrap in his gym locker. Owen’s decision to stay silent about his torment alludes to the real life issue of bullying.
This quote is significant because it shows the importance Owen had on Johnny’s life. As a result of his premature birth, Owen had an "unnatural" size and "wrecked" voice, but instead of seeing his size and voice as disabilities, he saw them as something that made him unique and worthy in God's eyes. The fact that Johnny is “doomed” to remember him instantly makes it clear that Owen’s influence goes farther than childhood, and may not always be
In Owen’s opinion, he had INTERRUPTED AN ANGEL, he had DISTURBED AN ANGEL AT WORK, he had UPSET THE SCHEME OF THINGS” (105). When Owen first went to Tabby’s room, he instantly returned to Johnny and woke him up saying he (Owen) had seen an angel in her room. When the boys went to Tabby’s room, Johnny pointed to her dressmaker’s dummy, thinking that was the angel Owen believed he saw. Owen denied mistaken the dummy for an angel and Johnny believed he (Owen) had hallucinated due to his fever. Later, after Tabby had invited Owen into her bed, and he was frightened by Harriet Wheelwright, he said she (Harriet) was “WAILING LIKE A BANSHEE” (108), a female Irish mythological spirit whose wailing is said to herald the death of a loved one. Owen believed that night was a sign of Tabby’s death and the baseball was fated, not accidental. His belief in angels, signs, and fate is important because it solidifies his faith in God and establishes him as God’s