I recently finished reading John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany and I thought a discussion on it would be a good way to dust off the old blog. My hope with these posts it to start discussions about meaningful subjects and what people find meaningful in life. This novel was a beautiful revelation of literature that had a significant impact on my thinking and made me wonder about “the meaning” of a number of things. Maybe the impact was what it was because I had been stuck reading history textbooks for the past two years and was dying to read some good lit, or maybe the book really is a great work of fiction like many have said. Whatever the case, if you’ve read it, feel free to comment and if you haven’t read it, feel free to comment, then go read it.
I want to stick with one key point that Irving makes at near the end of the story when John Wheelwright (the main character) says that life is disappointment. Without referencing too much of the story, John’s life is fairly unassuming. The stories seem to happen to the people around him and his best friend Owen Meany, is at the center of most. Life is a disappointment because he aspires for his life to be a great story and it always seems to fall short of his expectations. It can’t be seen in an entirely negative way even though the thought of disappointment seems to be bad. If we can consider that humanity yearns for great things, has deep passions, desires so much, are we not constantly disappointed to varying degrees? We seem to live in a world where that same humanity finds ways to create systems and procedures that suck the life out of passion, limit our desires, tell us our yearnings are nothing more than chemical imbalances that can be manipulated with other chemicals. If one tries to rise about the morass of mediocrity the masses reach up to suck that one back down to their level. Ayn Rand wrote about this in Atlas Shrugged, where there are those who “keep the world in place” and limit the potential of humanity. Why should we try to be great if society is set against you being great. Try telling someone you want to write a book or be a rock star. You’ll probably get some stat thrown at you about how rare it is for people to make it in “that business,” followed by questions about your “backup plan.”
I would think that one way to combat this antagonism towards life is to search for meaning and try to see wonder in the world. Reading, watching movies, hanging out with others, are part of the active life and by taking time to reflect on this life we may just see the potential for the better life. Owen Meany believed he was destined to do God’s work from the moment he could think about that kind of thing. It drove him to be bigger than his own life (if you’ve read the book you can understand even more how his physical stature comes into play) and his best friend came to believe in the transcendent by being a part of Owen’s story. This may be the counter to John’s disappointment. If he had hope in something better, he wouldn’t be disappointed. Is that what our society needs? Hope?
