A Prayer for Owen Meany: Chapter 7 Summary & Analysis

When Owen and John were seniors, practicing the shot in the school gymnasium, Owen finally tells him what he has believed since he was eleven: “GOD HAS TAKEN YOUR MOTHER. . . . MY HANDS WERE THE INSTRUMENT. . . . I AM GOD’S INSTRUMENT.” John asks why Owen needs his help with the shot, if he’s God’s instrument. Owen insists that “FAITH CAN MOVE MOUNTAINS,” and says John’s problem is that he doesn’t have faith.

That fall, John only applies to the University of New Hampshire, while Owen applies to Harvard and Yale. The University of New Hampshire gives Owen an Honor Society Scholarship before he even applies, but he won’t go there unless it’s to be with Hester and John. John won’t ask Owen to turn down an Ivy League school for him, and he is becoming a good student in English and History by himself—he tells Owen he can finally fend for himself. But Owen won’t rule out going to state school to see more of Hester, and his parents.

After their disagreement, Owen and John finally manage to make the basketball shot in under four seconds. Owen immediately wants to try for three seconds, to John’s irritation. “FAITH TAKES PRACTICE,” Owen says. That fall, he and John begin to quarrel for the first time. They can’t agree on where to go now that they have the senior privilege of taking the train to Boston once a week. John is happy going along with the boys who buy booze with fake IDs, get drunk, and go to a strip club. He doesn’t mind drinking, and he hasn’t lost his virginity yet, despite going on dates with Caroline O’Day and Lorna Pike.

Owen doesn’t drink, and he won’t make fake draft cards anymore, having become self-righteous and law-abiding after taking Kennedy’s speech to heart. So he and John have to endure their trips to Boston completely sober, even the shows at the strip club that are “only watchable to the blind drunk”—otherwise the performances are clearly “DISGUSTING” and “DEGRADING.” Owen makes them leave the strip club and walk around a nicer part of town, which is a new sight to him. John doesn’t realize that Owen purposefully wants to go to the upscale boutique where Tabitha once bought her infamous red dress.

Once Owen and John get to the store, they see that Tabitha had lied about it burning down. Owen saw the store in the newspaper one day and recognized the name from the label on the dress. They go inside and talk to the owner, who says the store never had a fire. Owen shows him a picture of Tabitha, and he says she was “The Lady in Red”—a singer at a supper club who always wore the red dress she bought at his store. She performed one night a week with a black pianist named Buster accompanying her, and she was a regular feature of the club.

Next Owen takes John to the office of Tabitha’s singing teacher, Graham McSwiney, who gave Owen an appointment to have his voice analyzed. They wait outside for the previous lesson to finish while John absorbs the fact that his mother was a very convincing liar. McSwiney eagerly examines Owen’s Adam’s apple, or larynx. When a normal person like John swallows, yawns, or screams, his Adam’s apple moves up and down. Owen’s Adam’s apple doesn’t move—he has a fixed larynx, stuck in the position of “a permanent scream.” McSwiney advises him to consider seeing a throat doctor for surgery.

Owen refuses, saying, “IF GOD GAVE ME THIS VOICE, HE HAD A REASON.” John asks McSwiney why Owen’s voice hasn’t changed with puberty, and McSwiney says he can’t explain why—he can only say that it likely won’t change in the future. Owen introduces John as Tabitha’s son, and shows McSwiney her picture. He explains that he got her the gig when the supper club asked him for good singers to perform. It wasn’t a serious gig, but she still thought she could be “discovered” singing there, despite McSwiney’s advice that nobody got discovered in Boston, especially in such a little joint. She wouldn’t sing under her real name out of shyness or provincialism.

McSwiney thought Tabitha was charming, but careless and unambitious—she preferred simple, popular songs and didn’t practice. Her voice was pretty, but she wouldn’t train it to be strong. She wanted to be “wholly out of character—but only once a week.” The club was named The Orange Grove, and her accompanist was a gay black man named Buster Freebody—another made-up name. McSwiney says he isn’t John’s father—he once tried to make a pass at Tabitha, but she turned him down. Owen says once again that God will tell John who his father is. McSwiney reassures them that nothing bad would have happened to Tabitha at The Orange Club.

Back in the present, John scoffs at a headline about Reagan in The New York Times. He remembers New Year’s Eve in December 1961, when just over three thousand U.S. military personnel were stationed in Vietnam. That night, Hester threw up in the rose garden outside from too much rum and Coke. By the next New Year’s Eve, there are over eleven thousand military personnel in Vietnam, and Hester was once again stuck throwing up in the rose garden. In Toronto, the school year will soon be over. John looks forward to going with Rev. Keeling’s family to their private island in Georgian Bay. He also looks forward to visiting Dan in Gravesend, and seeing one of his summer school productions. He doesn’t watch The Gravesend Players anymore.

In 1961, John and Owen still scanned the audiences at Dan’s shows to find John’s father. Now they imagine that his father must have been to see his mother sing at The Orange Grove. Owen wants to pull off a Hamlet-like scheme of staging a play set at a club called The Orange Grove, and seeing how the audience members react. But they don’t want to tell Dan about Tabitha’s secret life in case he doesn’t already know, and John doesn’t want him to be hurt by his curiosity about his biological father. John and Owen have this discussion on New Year’s Eve, at Hester’s apartment in Durham. It’s only two o’clock in the afternoon and Hester is already passed out from drinking.

Owen wants to go to the gym and practice their basketball shot, but John doesn’t want to. He asks Owen why Hester drinks so much, and Owen says Hester is “AHEAD OF HER TIME”—he believes, without knowing why, that the next generation or two will be angry and callous.

Back in the present, it’s June in Toronto. John bought a copy of The New York Times after talking to a car full of ignorant American tourists. He thinks that Americans became bored with hearing about Vietnam before America left Vietnam; they became bored with hearing about Watergate before the investigation was even finished; and they’ll be soon bored with Iran, Nicaragua, and the Persian Gulf, too, if they’re not already. The phenomenon is as familiar to John as Hester’s inevitable bouts of puking on New Year’s Eve. She puked in 1963, when there were 16,300 U.S. military personnel in Vietnam; she puked in 1964, when 23,300 Americans were there; and in 1965, when there were 184,300 Americans in Vietnam.

In 1966, there were 385,300 Americans in Vietnam, and John was by himself at Harriet’s house. In 1967, there were 485,600 Americans in Vietnam, and John himself threw up in the rose garden. He doesn’t remember New Year’s Eve 1968, but there were 536,100 Americans in Vietnam, and he was surely throwing up somewhere.

On January 1, 1962, Owen wrote in his diary, “I know I am God’s instrument.” John still didn’t understand the extent to which Owen believed God was guiding his life, which would later explain why Owen reacted as passively he did to the crises of that year. One day John and Owen were hanging around the editorial offices of the school newspaper, of which Owen was now the editor-in-chief, when a fellow senior named Larry Lish told them that JFK was sleeping with Marilyn Monroe. Larry was the son of the movie producer Herb Lish, and he was “Gravesend’s most cynical and decadent student.” He would get a girl pregnant every now and then, and his mother would fly her to Sweden for an abortion.

Larry was undeniably witty, but students and teachers secretly hated him—never outright, though, because his parents were too powerful. His father threw him parties in Beverly Hills, and his mother threw him parties on Fifth Avenue. The Lishes were divorced, and they competed for Larry’s attention with “excessive partying and expensive sex.” Larry’s mother told him about JFK and Marilyn Monroe, which Owen calls “A TRULY TASTELESS LIE.” Larry says that Owen can ask his mother himself when she visits next weekend.

Owen is very disturbed all week by this rumor—he idolizes JFK, and John says he wasn’t “sophisticated enough to separate public and private morality.” Today, John says, an affair between JFK and Marilyn Monroe would seem only moderately immoral compared to “the willful secrecy and deception, and the unlawful policies” of the Reagan administration. Owen, however, was very upset back then. “IF KENNEDY CAN RATIONALIZE ADULTERY, WHAT ELSE CAN HE RATIONALIZE?” he wonders. He blames Kennedy’s loose morals on his Catholicism—“IF CATHOLICS CAN CONFESS ANYTHING, THEY CAN FORGIVE THEMSELVES ANYTHING, TOO!”

Owen doesn’t believe the president is above the law—the president is supposed to set the example for upholding the law. He also objects to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s draft program that would draft an outsize proportion of minorities, high-school dropouts, and men from low-income families. McNamara pitched the draft as “an opportunity” for “the poor of America,” but Owen sees through the unjust policy.

In the present, it’s a hot July in Toronto, and John is back in the bad habit of buying The New York Times. The paper’s poll says that most Americans believe Reagan is lying, but John wonders if they care. He wants Katherine to invite him to her isolated island.

Larry’s mother, Mitzy Lish, was an attractive older woman—sexier than Hester, even, whose “early-blooming eroticism” was diluted by her carelessness and heavy drinking. Mitzy spent her days drinking coffee, smoking, doing her makeup or her hair, shopping, lunching with a friend or a lover, going to the movies, and gathering gossip. She never worked, or even cooked. Larry told everyone all about his mother—he thought she was a joke. But John and Owen are very intimidated by her, and feel very provincial in her presence.

As promised, Larry brings Mitzy to confirm the rumor about JFK and Marilyn Monroe. She seems to enjoy Owen’s distress at the news; like Barb, she bullied young men. To her and her son, Owen seems laughably naïve and unworldly to be so upset by an affair. Mitzy asks Owen, “If Marilyn Monroe wanted to sleep with you, would you let her?” Owen says he wouldn’t do it if he were the president—especially not if he were married. In disbelief, Mitzy says, “This is the future?” For Owen is the school’s valedictorian as well as the paper’s editor-in-chief.

But Owen won’t stand to be bullied or taken lightly—he says to Mitzy, “IF YOU WANTED TO SLEEP WITH ME…WHAT THE HELL…I SUPPOSE I’D TRY IT.” Then he walks away. Larry makes no effort to defend his mother, but Mitzy reports Owen to Randy White. Owen tries to defend himself to White, but it’s hard for him and John to put into words exactly what kind of sexual bullying Mitzy had taunted him with. Owen refuses to tell White about the JFK rumor that made him so upset, in case the rumor spreads. He wants to protect the president.

Mitzy apparently told White that Owen said something anti-Semitic to her, but Owen hadn’t even known she was Jewish. In a faculty meeting, White says that such disrespect to school parents cannot be tolerated, but Mr. Early and Dan argue that Owen broke no rules by propositioning Mitzy. White wants Owen expelled, but Dan says he should be put on probation, at most. White wants Owen punished for being anti-Semitic, but Mitzy never explained what he could have said to her that was related to her religion. White himself—as well as a good number of the WASPy Gravesend faculty—is known to be anti-Semitic himself, and Owenias not indicted for his supposed “discrimination.”

Owen is put on probation for the rest of the winter term, as Dan suggested. But he isn’t grateful to have been saved by the faculty, and he stops speaking in class or writing as The Voice. He says he’s focusing on writing his valedictorian speech, when it’ll be too late for them to expel him for what he says. The school makes him go to Dr. Dolder.

Back in Toronto in July, John is still waiting to be invited to Georgian Bay, and still raging at The New York Times. Congress is more concerned with lecturing the president’s lackey against blind devotion to the president’s agenda than with reprimanding the president himself. Whenever Owen got wind of such a bunch of bullshit, he would echo Harriet and declare: “THAT’S MADE FOR TELEVISION.”

Owen would say that about his bi-weekly sessions with Dr. Dolder—“MADE FOR TELEVISION.” He wouldn’t tell John what really happened in the sessions, however. He only says that he answers all of Dolder’s questions truthfully, without humor. Dolder told him to talk to Rev. Merrill, so he has two more sessions every week. Owen is already doing an independent course of study with Merrill, pursuing his interest in miracles and life after death.

Back to July in Toronto—John is getting his hair cut, and he tells the barber he wants it as short as Colonel Oliver North’s hair. The barber has no clue what he’s talking about, and John despairs at humanity’s short memory. Owen remembered everything, he says.

In February 1962, the winter term was nearly over. Owen was tired of getting up early in the dark, freezing mornings to go fulfill his scholarship job as a faculty waiter. It is so cold one morning that his pickup truck is dead, and he has to jump-start the granite truck and roll it down the hill before it will start. When he finally gets to school in the big truck, another car is blocking him from parking in the school’s circular driveway and he can’t park out on the street because of snow-plow rules.

The car in the driveway is Dr. Dolder’s Volkswagen Beetle, which he leaves parked outside the Main Academy Building overnight whenever he’s been drinking at the Whites’ house. He could have just walked across campus to begin with instead of driving, but he loves to drive everywhere. He never drinks so much that he couldn’t get back behind the wheel, but he loves his car too much to risk it. Owen is sitting in his truck fuming when he sees the basketball team walking towards the dining hall. He calls them over, since he knows them from practicing his shot.

Owen bets the players that they can’t pick up the Beetle in the driveway, but they claim they’re strong enough to carry it anywhere. Owen tells them to carry it into the Main Academy Building and put it on the stage of the Great Hall, where White has moved all the daily meetings to serve his “GRANDSTANDING.” While the team moves the car, Owen parks at Dan’s dorm to avoid suspicion, then goes to work. A janitor finds the car onstage when he is raising the blinds in the Great Hall, and calls White. White then calls the faculty to come and move the car offstage before the assembly, to avoid giving the students “the last laugh.”

When Dan gets White’s call and sees Owen’s car outside his dorm, he realizes who is probably behind the prank. White suspects Owen, too, without proof. Moving the car goes disastrously, since the faculty are not as strong as the basketball players, and moving a car downstairs is harder than moving it upstairs. Teachers start dropping from injury left and right. Dan thinks that they should have just ordered the more capable students to move it back instead of moving it themselves—then the students would also be liable for damaging the car.

White refuses to cancel morning meetings or enlist the students’ help; he climbs behind the wheel of the car and insists the teachers push the car down the stairs while he steers. Instead of driving smoothly down the staircase, the car flips and lands on its roof. White is trapped in the car while his back spasms painfully from lifting the car single-handedly earlier. He eventually has to be rescued by professionals with a blow torch.

Back in Toronto in July, Katherine has invited John to her island. He needs to get away from the newspapers—he hasn’t been to church in a month, too preoccupied with the news. He remembers what Owen and Rev. Merrill used to say: “WOE UNTO THEM THAT CALL EVIL GOOD AND GOOD EVIL.”

Merrill was the first person after John to ask Owen if he had been involved with moving the car onstage. Once Owen confirms that their conversation is confidential, he confesses. Merrill promises to steer White away from suspecting him. Dan tells Owen he doesn’t want to know anything about what happened. The headmaster has no hard evidence against Owen, but he soon receives evidence of a different transgression—Owen’s old fake ID business. Larry is busted buying beer, and he rats Owen out for selling fake IDs to the whole school. White and Chief Pike strike a deal where no criminal charges will be brought against anyone at the academy if all the fake draft cards are turned over. White makes all the students hand over their wallets to the faculty, who remove their fake draft cards.

Dan protests that confiscating wallets is illegal, but White insists he’s saving the school from the disgrace of having charges brought against its students for possessing illegal fake IDs. The student who produced and sold the IDs—Owen—will be brought before the Executive Committee, while everyone possessing a draft card will be on probation for the whole spring term. The Executive Committee “crucified” Owen, according to John. He is expelled. Old Archibald Thorndike publicly condemns the decision, as well as “the Gestapo methods” of confiscating the students’ wallets. Dan tells White that he’s “the worst thing that ever happened to this school,” and vows to resign, with other teachers, if White doesn’t leave.

Owen refuses to talk to anybody afterwards, until he calls Harriet to apologize for letting her down. She says that he didn’t let her down, and that she’s still proud of him, but he says that he’ll make her even more proud. He asks her to tell John and Dan to be sure to come to the next morning assembly. Worried about what he could be up to, John and Dan look for him all night, but can’t find him. Finally they drive past St. Michael’s School and realize that the statue of Mary Magdalene is missing. They go to The Great Hall and find the statue onstage. Owen has removed both her arms and her head, welded her to the podium, and bolted her to the floor. The janitor says that he isn’t telling Headmaster White, this time.

John tells his friends to tell everyone to come to the meeting early, and Dan tells his friends on the faculty to come to the meeting, “If you only go to one more meeting for the rest of your life.” Dan and John worry about what this latest vandalism will mean for Owen’s college acceptances, and how the head of St. Michael’s will react. They go to see Rev. Merrill to ask him to talk to the head of St. Michael’s on Owen’s behalf. They find Owen sitting behind Merrill’s desk, fiddling with the desk drawers. When Merrill arrives, Owen retreats to his normal chair and seems to sneer at Merrill.

Merrill tells Dan that the head of St. Michael’s Church and School is Father Findley. He doesn’t know what Owen has done, but Owen asks him to say a prayer for him at that morning’s meeting. Dan steers John out of the office so Owen and Merrill can talk. As they leave, John hears Merrill ask Owen if he’s had “that dream” again. Owen says he has, and he begins to sob. Merrill tells him that it’s only a dream, but Owen refuses to believe him. John doesn’t know what dream they’re talking about. Eventually Owen will tell him, and he will also tell Owen that it’s only a dream.

Walking back to the Main Academy Building, Dan and John see Randy kissing his wife, Sam, goodbye. Randy expects to lead a triumphant morning assembly, believing that he’s finally gotten the better of Owen. Little does he know that Owen will eventually defeat him, and that what awaits him in The Great Hall is the least of his embarrassments to come. The faculty will soon hand him a vote of “no confidence,” and the Board of Trustees will choose not to renew his appointment as headmaster. At commencement, the replacement valedictorian will refuse to deliver his speech as the crowd raises banners for Owen and chants his name, cheered by many of the faculty, members of the Board of Trustees, and parents who objected to the seizure of their sons’ wallets.

White is such a terrible man that he flouts the tradition among “good” schools like Gravesend Academy that headmasters shouldn’t further jeopardize the college admissions of seniors they’ve expelled. White goes to the schools that had accepted Owen and tells them about Owen’s record of selling fake draft cards, as well as his “virulently antireligious” behavior. The University of New Hampshire withdraws Owen’s scholarship, while Yale asks him to defer for a year and find meaningful employment while his employer reports to Yale on Owen’s “character and commitment.” Harvard also wants Owen to defer, but they specify that he will work for the Catholic Church during that time. Father Findley kindly does not press charges against Owen, and agrees to help his case with schools.

Findley apparently knew Owen’s family, and was very sympathetic when he recognized who Owen’s parents were, without saying why. Owen considers taking Harvard’s offer, even talking with Findley about it. But even though he seems to like Findley more than he expected to, he says he can’t accept the deal because his parents would never understand it. He says he wants to go to the University of New Hampshire with John, anyway. He doesn’t have his scholarship anymore, but he finds another one: he enlists in the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC).

In ROTC, the U.S. Army will pay for Owen to go to college while he takes some military courses and attends Basic Training while he’s in school. After graduating, he will become a second lieutenant and serve for four years of active duty, followed by two years on Reserve. In 1962, there are only 11,300 American military personnel in Vietnam, and none of them are in combat yet. Owen said he preferred this path because he wouldn’t have to wait a year to start college and he could be with John, but he doesn’t say anything about the six years he would be gone afterwards.

Dan and John wonder how Owen passed the height and weight requirement. Owen proudly informs them that he only had to be five feet tall and weigh one hundred pounds—which he apparently reached by standing on his toes and eating lots of bananas and ice cream. John says he didn’t know the details of Owen’s recurring dream at this point—he would have been more worried for Owen if he had.

When Rev. Merrill enters The Great Hall, he is struck with horror at the sight of the decapitated and amputated statue. When White arrives, he is perfectly oblivious to the unusual crowd or the figure onstage, mistaking it for Merrill leading a prayer. Finally he realizes what he’s looking at, and he tries and fails to pick the statue up. He tries to lecture the students on the seriousness of crime, but they interrupt him to ask what the opening hymn is. Merrill climbs onstage and gives the hymn—one of Owen’s favorites. After the hymn, Merrill says, “Let us pray for Owen Meany.” He doesn’t say anything himself, but lets the students pray silently, for as long as they wish.

White eventually says, “That’s enough,” but Merrill quietly replies, “I’ll say when it’s ‘enough.’” The students pray in silence until White has left the building—then Merrill says, “Amen.” John regrets that he didn’t know how to pray better back then. He wishes he could have prayed for Owen knowing what he knows now, such as what Owen wrote in his diary. He later saw how Owen had written his name the way he saw it on Scrooge’s grave: 1LT PAUL O. MEANY, JR. He wrote his name with an army rank, and the date of his death, over and over in the diary, even before he knew he would join the army. Owen later had an even more specific vision of his death, which came to him in a dream.