A Prayer for Owen Meany | Historical Context
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War forms a constant backdrop in the novel, both in John's diary entries for 1987 and in the story of his and Owen's lives in the 1960s. Irving includes many statistics culled from the Vietnam War Almanac that show the stages by which the war escalated.
America's involvement in Vietnam began in the early 1960s, when the Kennedy administration sent military advisers to aid the South Vietnamese government in its confrontation with North Vietnam. In 1962, there were over 11,000 military advisers in Vietnam, and President John F. Kennedy...
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