"NOW I KNOW WHY MY VOICE NEVER CHANGES," is a quote from John Irving's novel, A Prayer for Owen Meany. It indicates how Owen's life and voice was used through God. Similarly in the play "Oedipus Rex," composed by Sophocles many centuries earlier, Oedipus is forewarned of what appalling and dreadful actions he will encounter later in his life. Even though the two pieces of literature were written many centuries apart, they both have these themes of predestination, as well as the themes of faith and irony.
The theme of predestination in "Oedipus Rex" is crucial to where and what happens in Oedipus" life. When Oedipus was the prince of Corinth he attended a banquet and heard that he was not the son of the king and queen. To find the truth, he went to Pytho (the oracle of Delphi). The oracle told him that he would sleep with his mother and kill his father in the future but never directly told him whether or not the king and queen were his parents. To avoid the possibility of killing his father and being embarrassed about sleeping with his mother, he ran away from home hoping to avoid the outcome that the oracle had predicted. "I am the son of Polybus of Corinth I set out to go to Pytho Saying I should wed my mother, and be my natural father's murderer . When I heard that I fled." (Pg.29) If Oedipus had not known what his future was going to bring, it is probable that he would not have fled the city, therefore not finding his parents, which would have prevented the Oracle's predictions from becoming true.
Similarly, in A Prayer for Owen Meany, predestination, in the form of foreordained events, dictates the path that the story takes and how the story will end. If it was not for Owen believing in God and the things that God had shown him, it is quite possible that the rescue of innocent children or numerous other events in his life would not have taken place. Owen believed that he was placed on Earth for one final and important purpose.
