A Prayer for Owen Meany

Not the least of my problems is that I can hardly even imagine what kind of an experience a genuine, self-authenticating religious experience would be. Without somehow destroying me in the process, how could God reveal himself in a way that would leave no room for doubt? If there were no room for doubt, there would be no room for me.- Frederick Buechner



In the novel, A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving, Owen Meany’s belief of predestination makes a significant impact on John Wheelwright’s emotional stability as an adult.   John Wheelwright is unhealthily bitter and angry about his past experiences because he clings to a past that never lets him choose.   This bitterness fuels his repugnance towards the United States and the Reagan administration, because he understands that everything is in fact predestined just as Owen Meany had believed and he feels helpless because there is nothing he can do to change the course of events in life.   The death and responsibility of John’s mother’s death fell into the hands of Owen Meany and John can never accept that it was Owen’s fate to kill John’s mother.   The Vietnam War was completely out of John’s hands to control being a young adult and all, and the fact that eventually the war indirectly took the life of his best friend, for this he feels helplessly responsible and angry.   Into adulthood, John becomes bitter towards the United States and its catastrophic news because he knows it is all destined to happen, and like everything else in his life, he has no control or power to change anything.

The death of John’s mother, Tabitha Wheelwright, was out of John’s control and the job is predestined to be executed by Owen.   Her death falls into Owen’s hands because as he believes one night after an atrocious fever, that he had interrupted the Angel of Death.   Because of this, the task was then placed on him so that he would be the one to kill...