Owen Meany
...the instrument of God. His laid-back faith revolves around his predictive knowledge of his own brave death, for which he prepares all his life. Owen believes that everything that happens is the will of God, he continues to believe this even when he accidentally kills John's mother with a foul ball he hits at a Little League game. Owen explains himself to John through the armadillo by cutting its claws off. The message Owen was trying to say was “GOD HAS TAKEN YOUR MOTHER. MY HAND’S WERE THE INSTRUMENT. GOD HAS TAKEN MY HANDS. I AM GOD'S INSTRUMENT.” While Owen Meany is by no means a perfect individual, there is no doubt that his character possesses some divine qualities, which often scares people away. And what people are scared of, they usually turn away from. As the community pushed Owen into being like the rest of them he began to believe in himself and talk about his “plan” and his “faith” even more then before. People such as Reverend Louis Merrill couldn’t understand Owen’s oddity nor could he grasp the fanatical ideas he had of God himself. Instead he would simply push him away, refuse to listen to him and punished him for being “different” or not like the rest of them. Owen is not impressed with Rev. Merrill; he says that a preacher should not have so much intellectual doubt. And by Challenging the reverend’s knowledge of faith like this is what upsets the reverend the most. He cannot understand Owen’s actions and his explanations for them nor can he handle such abrupt attitude that he causes in Owen in the first place. All he seems to the community is one big nuisance and a pain in the neck because no one cares to stop and listen what he’s got to say because he talks funny, he’s loud and no one can even begin to believe what he seems too, because none of his beliefs are anywhere near to so called “normal” to the rest of the people so why should they bother to try and understand his way of thinking when they can get along just fine with their own values? They probably don’t want to try because they are afraid that if they show interest then they too will be labeled crazy just like Owen. Remember no one likes to be different, except Owen that is, or so he appears to. Only John seems to be the believer and that is what holds their friendship together in the first place. John believes Owen’s faith so much that he just begins to follow Owen while he leads. “I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.” This describes to us that John is no traditional believer because he doesn’t believe in God because of God himself but he believes in God because of Owen and what he believes in. And so the outsider shell has cracked for Owen letting in John to juggle between both worlds of normalness and an outsider. Yet even though he believes in Owen’s beliefs he still spends his life trying to figure out why, as for the time being he just trusts Owen to know what he’s talking about. Being an outsider can be a positive thing or a negative thing. Depends how one interprets it and how they make of the situation. Owen put in an attempt to make being an outsider a positive experience, yet there where many times when he struggled. Times when forced compliments of him were easily detected and ones that h...