I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice. Not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God. I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.
The novel is one of those strange species of fiction in which the first-person narrator is relating the events of his life, but the story is really about someone else entirely. It is tantamount to admitting that you are a supporting player in someone else’s life or, alternatively, that you are not the feature attraction of your own life. The most famous instance of this type of narrator may well be Dr. John Watson whose first-person accounts of the most interesting events in his own life are actually about Sherlock Holmes. The opening line of the novel quoted here, however, at least, shows the author addressing the strangeness of his choice for point-of-view. This may be Owen Meany’s story in reality, but the narrator begins by informing the reader that the central figure of his own story had the kind of profound impact upon that goes leagues beyond the Dr. Watson example.
Owen Meany believed that “coincidence” was a stupid, shallow refuge sought by stupid, shallow people who were unable to accept the fact that their lives were shaped by a terrifying and awesome design – more powerful and unstoppable than the Yankee Flyer.
This tenet of the boy who is responsible for making the narrator a Christian is a fundamental guiding philosophy of the novel. At various points throughout the narrative characters refer to coincidence and usually in ways that the word ends with an exclamation. There is something of the miraculous in the perception of coincidences, but if faith is determined upon a foundation of purpose existing in every seemingly random act and, what’s more, if that faith also requires that God is life’s director who controls everything taking place before the camera, then there really be no such things as miracles.
And what was the cause of the falling out between the Catholics and Mr. Meany? I always asked. Owen never told me. The damage was irreparable, he would repeat; he would refer only to the UNSPEAKABLE OUTRAGE.
It is true: Owen never does tell the narrator what he means with his constant reference to the outrage too terrible to speak. Pretty literal guy on that point, for sure. But John will discover the details of the outrage though not until the very last pages of his story. Suffice to say that the details enlarge, expand and deepen one’s understanding of just why and how tiny, little nasal-voiced Owen exudes such a powerful force upon the word. Owen is a character who in most any other novel would be a subject for pathos, but he is so confident and assured and in control of every situation—even as a child—that he seems spectacular more than merely human. Or, perhaps, he just has faith that he is so.
