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Fiction Entry 1: Time for Prayer


          After reading 313 pages of A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving I have discovered something strange, that a book we read in middle school actually has values. I know that this is a shock to many of you, as usually middle school books are regarded as useless, with no practical themes, or at least none that anyone would remember. Yet somehow one of the fated books is coming back to be a useful tool, Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick. Now for those who don’t remember it, Freak the Mighty is a book told from the perspective of a large, average kid about a small, ingenious one.

          Now the main idea is based upon Kevin, the small character, and how he dealt with bullying, and the development while being different. Owen Meany is the small character in A Prayer for Owen Meany, whereas the story is being told from the perspective of a fairly average boy named Johnny. The same issues are presented with Owen as they are for Kevin, they both try to figure out how to develop with the people around them despite their size, and other abnormalities.

          In Freak the Mighty, Kevin tries to seek answers through science, and new exoskeleton technology, and in A Prayer for Owen Meany, Owen seeks answers through religious faith. The main difference between the two storylines is age, Kevin is young, and *spoiler alert* dies young at the end of the novel, ending his story. Whereas A Prayer for Owen Meany shows almost the entire development of Owen’s life (at least to the halfway point). This duality is what lead me to create an artistic representation of the situation, as any good poster would do, I followed the back to back character layout, to make sure that everyone knows that these two characters are connected.



          I tried to focus on the colors, if it wasn’t obvious enough, and wanted to show the similarities and differences between each character. The left is Owen, kneeling to pray or some other religious act, and the right is Kevin, who has his crutches and is imagining what an exoskeleton would be like. 

The white for each of their thoughts is used to show the purity and safety of their ideas. The red is used to show the internal and external conflicts that each character faces. The centered blue shows both faith and intelligence, qualities the two characters share. Finally, the two colors that are different, the only real difference between the two is the purple, a religious color in the Christian faith, and green, a color used to represent the scientific and technological ideas. These two ideas are both used the same way, to cope with, and to answer the hardships that each character faces.

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