Irving briefly studied under Grass in Vienna during his undergraduate years.

A Prayer for Owen Meany is also heavily inspired by the book The Tin Drum by the German novelist Günter Grass. Hester Eastman also boldly rejects female chastity, but is belittled by the narrator. Tabitha’s niece, Hester Eastman, also recalls Hawthorne’s protagonist Hester Prynne. The female character in A Prayer for Owen Meany, Tabitha Wheelwright, rejects the stigma of her illegitimate pregnancy, but is still divinely punished by death in a freak accident. The two books are both set in conservative New England communities, and both concern an illegitimate child secretly conceived between a woman and a popular reverend. A Prayer for Owen Meany, in particular, heavily alludes to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Irving’s style of writing is frequently compared to that of Charles Dickens-his sprawling plots, unforgettable characters, and highly dramatic narratives are all classically Dickensian. until President Carter issued a general pardon in 1977. Crossing the border into Canada was one such way to avoid the draft, but draft dodgers wouldn’t be allowed back into the U.S. Men like John, Noah Eastman, Buzzy Thurston, and Harold Crosby went to great lengths to avoid the draft (John, for instance, cuts off his trigger finger to make him ineligible), although it was largely the most disadvantaged Americans who ended up going to war and dying, as Owen points out. in continuing to sacrifice its young men in an unwinnable war on the other side of the world.

Anti-war protests, both peaceful and violent, erupted across the country as millions questioned the goal of the U.S. casualties as well as the many documented bombings, massacres, and abuses inflicted on the civilian populations of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. John and Owen Meany were young men of draft age during the Vietnam War, which eventually became deeply unpopular primarily due to the massive number of U.S. The Cold War–era conflict with the greatest toll on America was the Vietnam War (1955-1975), a long, ugly war waged in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Kennedy’s presidency, to the Iran-Contra Affair during Ronald Reagan’s presidency in 1987. Heavy-handed American efforts to counteract or neutralize Soviet aggression led to many misguided global interventions denounced in A Prayer of Owen Meany, from the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 during John F. The Cold War between the communist Soviet Union and the democratic United States started shortly after John was born and was still ongoing 40 years later. The narrator of A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Wheelwright, was born in 1942, and he’s narrating the book in 1987 at the age of 45.

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving