owen meany essays

owen meany essays In the novel, A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving, Owen Meanys belief of predestination makes a significant impact on John Wheelwrights 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 Johns mothers death fell into the hands of Owen Meany and John can never accept that it was Owens fate to kill Johns mother. The Vietnam War was completely out of Johns 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 Johns mother, Tabitha Wheelwright, was out of Johns control and the job is predestined to be executed by Owen. Her death falls into Owens 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 Tabitha Wheelwright. In Owens opinion, he had INTERUPTED AN ANGEL, he had DISTURBED AN ANGEL AT WORK, he had UPSET THE SCHEME OF THINGS.- The Angel, pg. 102 Owen convinced himself that the reason he was used to kill Johns mom is because he is an instrument of God and that God had taken away Owens hands because he is helplessly under...