Owen Meany Chapter 8 Owen’s Goal When He Insists They Continue to Practice €œthe Shot”

Owen Meany - Chapter 8

We'll get the obligatory political commentary out of the way first...

So what if civil liberties were suspended for six months? So what that there could be searches without warrants? So what if people could be detained without counsel for up to ninety days?

Okay. Enough of that.

Bob and I spoke a bit last week, in comments, about whether present-day John is displaying signs of mental instability. That may be too strong a word for it, but I agree that his own descriptions of his behavior, at least in terms of his "addiction" to the news and inability to relate easily with the people around him, are not the words of a man at peace with himself or the world.

Certainly, the loss of his finger--and, more to the point, the circumstances under which the amputation occurred--have had an impact on his present-day outlook. We can better understand his insistence that he did not "flee" to Canada to escape the draft, and the complexity of his feelings toward those who did.

To say nothing of the complexity of his feelings toward Owen.

The two passages that stood out to me in this chapter show a John who, when not overwrought by his political convictions, is very aware of the passage of time; a lonely man who accepts--perhaps as inevitable--but does not embrace, the life he has come to lead.

Now we're the grownups we were in such a hurry to become; now we can drink all the beer we want, with no one asking us for proof of our age.

...pine pitch on your fingers is the same everywhere; and the kids with their hair damp all day, and their wet bathing suits, and someone always with a skinned knee, or a splinter, and the sound of bare feet on a dock ... and the quarreling, all the quarreling. I love it; for a short time, it is very soothing. I can almost imagine that I have had a life very different from the life I have had.

The final pair of quotes I chose from Chapter 8 have to do with Owen's personal life - his relationship with Hester.

I had the strangest feeling that anything between them was possible: that they did it and had always done it with abandon; that they had never done it, but that they might be doing something even worse--or better--and that the real bond between them (whether they "did it" or not) was even more passionate and far sadder than sex.

"I USED HESTER'S PHONE," he said.

"I'm surprised she didn't beat the shit out of you for that," I said.

"SHE DID," Owen said; he turned his face away from the glowing light of the TV. "I WOULDN'T TELL HER WHAT THE PHONE CALLS WERE ABOUT, AND SHE THOUGHT I HAD ANOTHER GIRLFRIEND."

"Why don't you have another girlfriend?" I asked him; he shrugged again.

"SHE DOESN'T BEAT ME UP ALL THE TIME," Owen said.

Owen grew up disconcertingly fast; we had several long, leisurely chapters about his childhood, and then suddenly the boys hit puberty and we started skipping whole years between anecdotes. It's harder to really "get" Owen as a grown man.

It's harder to have sympathy for his oddities when they begin to have real-world effects beyond the recasting of pageants and plays.

He has engaged in criminal behavior - and paid the price in several ways.

He has entered into a long-term adult relationship that is, at the very least, so fraught with issues on both sides that, while it presumably offers some comfort to both Owen and Hester, is clearly not a refuge or a safe haven for either of them.

And, at the close of the chapter, he makes and carries out a decision that has permanent physical and psychological consequences for John.

The one thing we do know, absolutely, about Owen is that his actions are driven by a profound and unshakable certainty in his faith, both in God and in his own role as God's instrument.

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Source: https://jentucker.blogspot.com/2008/03/owen-meany-chapter-8.html

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