Fate and Predestination Theme Analysis

In A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving explores the concept of fate and predestination in the lives of his characters. The book’s narrator, John Wheelwright, describes the unusual history of his friend Owen Meany, who has a very detailed vision of his own death at a young age. Later, Owen dies exactly as he once foresaw. This incredible story raises the question of whether or not Owen’s death was truly “fated,” or if he had any free will about the matter. If he truly lacked control over his destiny, does that mean that all of humanity is also powerless to choose the course of their own lives? Irving does not explicitly answer this question in the novel, instead leaving readers to contemplate the issue for themselves—a push towards individual judgment that is suggestive in itself. However, the novel implies that while Owen may have known his destiny, he had to actively choose to fulfill it, and so retained his free will in his life.

Both the extremely specific and unusual nature of Owen’s death and his accurate prediction of it suggest that he was always linked to a particular destiny, thereby emphasizing the power of fate. However, this situation also points to the power of free will—glimpsing such a specific vision of his own possible death presents Owen with the opportunity, if he so chooses, to avoid ever putting himself in such a situation. Owen’s idea of his own death comes from a recurring dream where he sacrifices himself to save a group of Vietnamese children and nuns from an explosion somewhere in a warm place with palm trees. At the end of the book, he dies in exactly that way: at an airport in Arizona, he runs into a group of Vietnamese orphans being escorted to new homes in America by nuns, and he dies from the injuries he receives when he shields them from a grenade. Owen even knew the exact date of his death and the exact way in which he would manage to save the orphans: by pulling off a perfect “slam dunk” shot with John to thrust the grenade out of harm’s way.

While this fulfilled prophesy points to the power of fate, Owen’s foresight regarding his own death also emphasizes the equal power of free will: if Owen had wanted to reject his fate, he simply could have planned to spend the day of his supposed death at home in New Hampshire, where he was unlikely to come across Vietnamese orphans, nuns, or grenades. As a child, Owen never once left the town where he was born—it would have been perfectly natural for him to never travel to a new climate, or at least not until the day of his premature “death” passed. Yet instead of thinking about how to preserve his own safety, or passively following the course of the provincial life he was born into, Owen actively pursues his fateful vision—that is, he uses free will to prepare for and bring about his fate—determined to save the innocent lives he saw in danger. For years, he tirelessly rehearses the slam-dunk shot with John. He voluntarily enlists in the Reserve Officer Training Corps to become a soldier and fight overseas in Vietnam. He even studies Vietnamese to be able to communicate with the children he saw his dream. Rather than use free will to escape his fate, or have no choice in the matter whatsoever, Owen does everything he can think of to position himself for his fated martyrdom.

As the day of his imminent death draws closer, Owen continues to carry out the final preparations for his sacrifice, even when the hardest choice he has to make is about putting his best friend at risk. In his recurring dream, Owen always saw John with him at the moment of his death, which frightened Owen because he was more concerned for his friend’s life than his own. At first, he seeks to prevent John from being drafted into the war so that John can’t join him in Vietnam, where Owen logically expects to die. Yet as time goes by and the military continues to employ Owen in roles on American soil rather than deploying him overseas, Owen begins to have doubts about when or where he is supposed to die—or if he’s even supposed to die, after all. However, when he is assigned to a body escort mission in Arizona the week of his death, he realizes that Arizona could be the warm place of his dream, and he could still have the opportunity to save people. Focusing on the innocent lives he has the potential to save buoys Owen and strengthens his resolve to use free will to bring about his fate. In order to move everything into place, Owen invites John to spontaneously come to Arizona with him, knowing John is instrumental to the slam-dunk from his vision. John would not have been on the scene if Owen had not brought him there; Owen had to make the difficult choice of exposing his friend to trauma and violence (that is, exercise free will) in order to save many other lives and allow his fate to play out.

Even if Owen could not have predicted from the start that he would die at the hands of a deranged teenager named Dick in an airport restroom in Arizona, he was always willing to become a martyr, and repeatedly chose the path he believed would take him there. In other words, Owen was always an active participant in his fate, not a passive victim. Throughout the novel, Irving emphasizes Owen’s firm will and conscious decisions to try and carry out his “destiny.” He could have stepped back or turned away, but he chose not to. A significant quote in the book from the theologian Søren Kierkegaard reinforces Irving’s idea that following one’s faith into a designated fate is a formidable act of will and selflessness rather than a passively divine outcome: “What no person has a right to is to delude others into the belief that faith is something of no great significance, or that it is an easy matter, whereas it is the greatest and most difficult of all things.” Owen’s precise foreknowledge of his fate made the circumstances of his choice more extraordinary, but the basic principle of his experience—coupled with his Christian faith—suggests that even those believers who have not seen God’s exact plan for them can actively work to bring about their destiny.