Owen’s father and Mrs. Meany’s husband. Mr. Meany is from a working-class, Boston Irish family, and owns a granite quarry. He resents the private Gravesend Academy and is reluctant to send his son there. He firmly believes that his wife conceived Owen when she was a virgin, and when the Catholic churches in Massachusetts rejected them, they moved to New Hampshire and stopped going to church altogether. He eventually loses his son, his wife, and his quarry, and becomes a part-time meter reader for the electric company.
Get the entire A Prayer for Owen Meany LitChart as a printable PDF.
Mr. Meany Character Timeline in A Prayer for Owen Meany
The timeline below shows where the character Mr. Meany appears in A Prayer for Owen Meany. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1: The Foul Ball
...she’s allergic to dust. She also wears headphones to muffle the noise from the quarry. Mr. Meany runs the family’s errands and drives Owen to Sunday school. He doesn’t want Owen to...
(full context)
Chapter 3: The Angel
...tells him that Owen feels worse than he does. They walk to the cemetery, where Mr. Meany sits in his truck. He tells John that he will keep his promise to Tabitha...
(full context)
...night, Owen declares that Dan shouldn’t be left alone with Tabitha’s dressmaking dummy, her double. Mr. Meany drives them over to the dormitory and Owen leaves his flashlight illuminating Tabitha’s grave, knowing...
(full context)
Chapter 4: The Little Lord Jesus
Mr. Meany is pleasant whenever John stops by with Owen, but Mrs. Meany only stares into the...
(full context)
Chapter 5: The Ghost of the Future
...error, bad acting, and characters going off-script. Owen sees his riveted parents in the crowd: Mr. Meany looks afraid of his son, while Mrs. Meany is overwhelmed with uncontrollable sobbing.
(full context)
...can’t tell who he means, so some of them get up to leave along with Mr. Meany and Mrs. Meany. Owen tells John to get him out of there, so he and...
(full context)
Chapter 6: The Voice
In the evenings, Owen drives Mr. Meany ’s tomato-red pickup truck down to the boardwalk at Hampton Beach with John. They drive...
(full context)
...those years ago. Then he develops muscles from his hard labor in the quarries with Mr. Meany , and starts smoking a pack a day. The work and the cigarettes give his...
(full context)
Chapter 9: The Shot
...his medal pinned to it. He was given a full military funeral with honors, and Mr. Meany and Mrs. Meany asked that he be buried in Gravesend rather than Arlington. Rev. Wiggin,...
(full context)
...At the Meanys’ house, Mrs. Meany stares into the dead ashes of the fireplace while Mr. Meany talks with John. He believes that the government has given them $50,000, while John knows...
(full context)
Mr. Meany says the baseball was never there—he looked for it in Owen’s room for years, and...
(full context)
Mrs. Meany continues to order Mr. Meany to stop talking, and John thinks that she’s perfectly crazy—possibly even mentally disabled. She might...
(full context)
John thinks that he could kill Mr. Meany and Mrs. Meany for their ignorance. He thinks of them as “monsters of superstition,” and...
(full context)
...Hester to fall out of love with him before he died. In the monument shop, Mr. Meany shows John Owen’s gravestone, with his full name, dates of birth and death, and Latin...
(full context)
Rev. Merrill agrees with John that Mr. Meany is a “monster of superstition” and Mrs. Meany is likely mentally disabled, and he shares...
(full context)
...and has not listened to him since. John thinks that Merrill is no different from Mr. Meany and Mrs. Meany—they all used self-centered religion for their own ends.
(full context)
...made by John’s baseball, reflecting against the medal pinned to the flag on Owen’s casket. Mr. Meany and Mrs. Meany stare at the medal and the casket as if they expect Owen...
(full context)
When Merrill is done, the honor guard folds Owen’s flag and hands it to Mr. Meany and Mrs. Meany. The recessional hymn is the same one played at Tabitha’s funeral. It’s...
(full context)
...Congregational Church, performed by Merrill’s replacement. At Harriet’s old house, he was shocked to see Mr. Meany in the garden, reading the electric meter. His granite company was gone, and this was...
(full context)
John sees Mr. Meany still wearing Owen’s medal, which survived when the flag burned. He thinks of Hardy’s quote...
(full context)
