Mary Magdalene In A Prayer For Owen Meany

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Following Owen’s expulsion from Gravesend Academy in A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving, he decides to steal the statue of Mary Magdalene from St. Michael’s church. To get revenge on the superintendent Randy White, he welds the statue to the stage of the Great Hall. Johnny and his peers are astonished to see that Owen has removed the statue’s arms and head.
When Johnny first sees the statue on the stage, he describes how “Mary Magdalene was there to greet us: armless, but reaching out to us; headless, but eloquent” (Irving 409). The Mary Magdalene statue is used as a symbol to represent Johnny's mother Tabitha. In the bible, Mary is a disciple of Jesus who used to be a prostitute. Tabitha is seen in a similar way by the citizens of Gravesend,
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Foreshadowing In A Prayer For Owen Meany

In A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving, foreshadowing is employed to enhance the complexity of the ideas of predestination and fate. Irving connects foreshadowing to predestination in that even though Owen has intuitions or visions of the future, he cannot alter this foreseen course of events because it is fated to transpire. The ominous nature of recurring armless imagery and other events that foreshadow the deaths of Tabby and Owen indicate the inexorable nature of a greater force orchestrating…

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