Aubrey holds a Ph.D. in English and has published many articles on twentieth-century literature. In this essay, he discusses Owen Meany as a Christ-figure and shows how Irving connects this to a larger network of symbolism to buttress his critique of American politics and society.
Hunting for Christ-figures in literature is a popular pastime amongst students searching for a thesis to carry them through a term paper assignment. Although Western literature can yield many examples of such figures (Melville's Billy Budd is perhaps the best example), identifying Christ-figures in modern literature is often a more problematic enterprise. Many have been proposed, ranging from Frodo or Gandalf in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy (1954-1956) to R. P. McMurphy in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), although none of these.....
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