A Prayer for Owen Meany | Plot as Repetition: John Irving's Narrative Experiments
In the following essay excerpt, Shostak explores Irving's use of repetition to "confirm Owen Meany's conviction ... that he has been ordained an instrument of God."
The structure of A Prayer for Owen Meany is likewise circular, but in this novel, the determination of plot takes on a vastly different emphasis. Whereas The World According to Garp posits design as psychological entrapment, A Prayer for Owen Meany presents patterns of repetition as elements in a providential plan. Determinism can be teased out of the plot of Garp, as I have tried to show, by looking at the patterns of repetition and their relation to the thematic plan and psychological energies depicted in the novel; Owen Meany, however, has an...
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