Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Is It Fate, or Free Will...?

In chapter 7 of A Prayer For Owen Meany, Owen realizes 4 things: (1) that his voice doesn't change, but he doesn't know why; (2) he is God's instrument; (3) when and how he is going to die; (4) he will be a hero. He then says: "I trust that God will help me, because what I'm supposed to do looks very hard" (Irving 416). Owen believes in fate, that God has already planned his life, and his life follows it unwillingly, but is Owen's life completely based on fate? On the night of the play, A Christmas Carol, Owen "discovers" his name on his own grave, and since then he has found out that he will die a hero as first lieutenant. So what does Owen do? He gets kicked out of school and joins the army. Now wait a minute, you could say that the things Owen did were a result of fate, or a coincidence, but I think otherwise. Owen wants to believe that his life is fate-driven, so he chooses to do the things that he does to make his "destiny"/"fate" come true. Owen has had and always will have a choice of what he can and can't do, but there are just some things that don't make sense. For example, when Owen "interrupted" the Angel of Death and he was "appointed" to kill Johnny's mother. That could be explained as a coincidence when he hit the ball, and that Owen simply imagined that he saw the Angel of Death; or as fate because he interrupted Tabby's original death, so he was being punished by having to kill Tabby himself. In the end, Owen will die because either (a) the choices he made, or (b) it was his fate. It's all up to the reader.

2 comments:

  1. I believe it is fate that will cause Owen to die because the evidence of him having a dream and seeing his death date gives it away that Owen just might not be up to this all alone...

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  2. That may be true, but along the way, Owen had a choice to make decisions to atop his so-called "fate".

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