Learning who John Wheelwright’s father was, was a long awaited but expected event. I will admit that I thought John’s father was going to be a character not mentioned throughout the story, but to learn that John’s father was none other than Rev. Lewis Merrill was and was not a surprise. It was a surprise in the conventional sense that who knew it was Rev. Merrill all this time? (Well of course he did), but just the fact that this character that we had read about all throughout the story, and now coming to find that HE was the one who was the big mystery father of John, its a bit hard to put into words really. This however didn’t surprise me in the sense that this is a John Irving book and anything can happen to be quite frank, going by the themes and patterns of this book and how it is full of surprises this should come as no surprise; so all together a mix of emotions is what you could say I felt as the reader. I could only imagine however how John, who was equally in the dark as I was, see that is just the thing.
