The World According To Garp English Literature Essay

The story is set in the past. It starts in the year 1942, when Jenny Fields injures a man at a movie theater.

The exact date at the end of the story, is somewhat more difficult to determine. Garp was born at the end of the second World War, I think around 1944 or 1945. He lived to be 33 years old. The book ended when he died, so that should be in the year 1977.

It quite easy actually to determine, because of the book’s first line: “Garp’s mother, Jenny Fields, was arrested for wounding a man in a movie theater.”

Altogether the story takes about 35 years.

The story is set in a couple of different places. It starts of in the US, when Garp is at Steering school, where his mother is head nurse. When he graduates from Steering, he decides to go to Austria, to develop himself as a writer. He lives in Vienna for about 1 or 2 years. Then he returns to the US. Their he decides he finally wants to marry the love of his live, Helen. For quite some time he lives with Helen, in a house of their own. The exact location isn’t known. When the accident happens (for a precise description: see the summary), they go to live with Jenny, who is taking care of them at that moment. The last couple of years they live at Steering school (again), where Helen is teaching English.

The story tells us about the life of an extraordinary man, T.S. Garp. He is the son of the famous feminist Jenny Fields, which will hunt him for all his life (and eventually is an indirect cause of his death).

In his younger years Garp lived at Steering School, where his mother was head nurse. As soon as he graduates, he goes to Vienna with his mother, where he resides for about one or two years.

Then he return to the US, to marry Helen. They bought their own house and lived happily for a couple of years. Then Garp finds out Helen is unfaithful. Then “the accident” happens and the Garps move in with Jenny, who starts nursing them. When the family Garp was ready to live by themselves again, they bought a house at Steering, where Helen starts teaching English. Eventually Garp was murdered by a feminist (for specific details see the summary).

The story’s main characters are: T.S. Garp, Helen Holm and Jenny Fields.

T.S. Garp: Garp is the lead character in the story. Actually it is “his” story (which is quite obviously concerning the book’s title). The story is that of Garp’s life. What happens to him, what people are involved, and how it affects him mentally. He is a strange man in some ways. His ideas of what is normal, and what isn’t, are different from the common perceptions. On the other hand he is a real funny guy. His sense of humor is real good (which makes the book much more fun to read).

Helen Holm: Helen is the daughter of Garp’s wrestling coach Ernie Holm. Garp met Helen when he started wrestling, and he always liked her. But Helen said she would only marry a writer. Therefore Garp decided to become a writer. When Garp returns from Vienna, he started to live with Helen. They got two children: Duncan and Walt.

Helen studied English and taught at a university, before she eventually taught English literature at Steering School.

Jenny Fields: Jenny Fields is the mother of T.S. Garp. She became famous by writing the first feminist novel. This will be a disadvantage for Garp for all his life. He will always be knows (even with the sales of his own novels) as “the son of …”.

Jenny was nurse a Boston Mercy Hospital during the second World War. There she met Garp’s father. When Garp was born, she took him to Steering, where she became head nurse. It was at Steering and Vienna that she wrote her famous book. She stopped being nurse as soon as she became rich and famous, and started working for charity.

The book’s minor characters are: Duncan Garp, Walt Garp, Ernie Holm, Cushie Percy, Roberta, Ellen James, John Wolf and Dean Bodger.

The message of the story is not so obvious in this story. You learn a lot about the different characters, what kind of people they are, and what they’re capable of. So maybe that’s the message: people aren’t all bad, except some. You should always be aware of the dangers ahead. That’s what eventually killed Garp.

But still, I think the author wrote this book to entertain people. He always making fun of characters, or making a quick little joke. I don’t think he wrote it to learn the reader something. It’s not that kind of story.

The story ends with Garp’s death. Before he was murdered, the narrator says things like: “If he noticed it, he might have prevented it”. So he should have seen the danger ahead. He should have noticed something was wrong.

Your Opinion

Well of course, Garp is the most sympathetic character in the story. Besides him, Helen is always considered sympathetic by the narrator. So these two are the (main) characters, that I found the most sympathetic.

Garp is a very humoristic man, but also a loving father and husband. He always good towards others, willingly to help someone if necessary.

Helen is a somewhat strange woman. Is diffecult to explain in what way. Maybe she doesn’t really show her emotions. But still, she is always kind and nice to others.

The most unsympathetic characters are Pooh Percy and Mrs Ralph in my opinion. Pooh Percy is quite obvious: she kills Garp for some ridiculous reason. She jealous at him, therefore thinks her problems will be solved by killing him.

Mrs Ralph is a lot less obvious. Her attitude isn’t that of an unsympathetic person. But still, she neglects her son Ralph, and tries to get Garp in trouble by seducing him. She’s full of self-pity, and tries to get advantage out of others.

When I read the story I was constantly surprised. You really don’t know what’s going to happen. Garp as a person is unpredictable, but his environment might be even more unpredictable. That’s an important element for the story, because it inflicts on Garp’s personal life.

On the other hand, the story is full of humor. Not only jokes that Garp makes, but also events that take place. Irving writes with a great ironic tone in his story, which I consider is brilliant.

My favorite part of the book is where Garp is trying to catch the child molester. The child was raped in the park by a man with a mustache, so Garp went of and soon he saw a man with a mustache:

Garp yelled at the figure, an elderly gentleman with a white mustache, who looked over his shoulder at Garp with an expression so surprised and ashamed that Garp was sure he’d found the child molester. He thundered through the vines and small, whiplike trees to the man, who had been peeing and was hastening to fold himself back into his trousers. He looked very much like a man caught doing something he shouldn’t have done.

“I was just…” the man began, but Garp was upon him and thrust his stiff, cropped beard into the man’s face. Garp sniffed him over like a hound.

“If it’s you, you bastard, I can smell it on you!” Garp said.

Funny thing is, that the man wasn’t involved in the rape at all. He was just taking a leak over there. Imagine, you’re just taking a leak, someone yells at you, is sniffing your genitals and accuses you of being a child molester.

Irving did make me aware of certain things, that I probably already knew before I read the book. The world is unpredictable, you don’t know what lies ahead. This novel is a great example of what can happen. This message becomes clear by the storyline in the novel, but also by the short stories that Garp wrote. They are strange, especially “the world according to Bensenhaver”. This is a great example of strange things that can happen to you.

But if this message is important? I don’t really know. It probably is, but you don’t learn this kind of ethics by reading a book. I gained by gaining more experience in life, not by reading a book.

If I could ask Irving a couple of questions, It would be these:

“how did you manage it to make up such a story, where everything is unpredictable but afterwards explainable?”

Because that’s the strength of the novel. Afterwards everything makes sense. Every event is for the sake of the novel. I would like to know if it was all Irving’s imagination or he did it otherwise.

“why didn’t you make the story that long? It’s getting quite boring the last hundred pages…”

Like I said, the last hundred pages are just too much. I think it’s also for the sake of the book.

“how did you manage to write a novel within a novel?”

You can see the similarity in Garp’s writing style and Irving’s, but there are some differences. Is this done purposely, or not?

C. Sumamry

The story starts with the life of the nurse Jenny Fields. She doesn’t like men and she loathes the feeling she calls “lust”. Because she’s a nurse and cares a lot about people, she wants to have a child but she doesn’t want to have anything to do with a man, she isn’t searching for sex or a relationship, so it seems almost impossibleto get pregnant. But in a very special way, she manages to get pregnant.

When the baby is born she calls him T.S. Garp because this was the father’s name, and the only thing he was able to say. She stops working at the hospital and finds a job, as a nurse, at Steering, a school for boys. Garp grows up there and when he is old enough he attends school there too.

The Percy familie that lives at Steerings too, has a dog called Bonkers. It is not a very friendly dog, one day he bites a piece out of Garp’s ear. Stewart Percy isn’t nice eather, he refuses to put the dog down.

Garp doesn’t care much for sports but he is obligated to preform at least one sport. His mother chooses wrestling for him and becomes friends with the coach. The coach has a daughter, Helen, and garp is fond of her, but she isn’t really interested in him. Garp is a talented wrestler, but he decides that he wants to become writer and when he has finished high school, Garp and Jenny leave for Vienna. A few days before they leave, Garp and Cushie Percy, Stewart daughter, have sex in the infirmary. On their way there, Garp meets Bonkers and bites off a piece of the dog’s ear.

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Garp and Jenny both start writing in Austria. Jenny is writing a book about her life as a nurse and her opinion on lust. Garp is about eighteen years old now and often visits the whores in Vienna. he likes women and sex and this is very weird for Jenny because she can’t imagine why someone would enjoy anything like that and she finds it peculiar that her son can have these feelings while she loathes thins like that.

Garp writes a lot to Helen because she promised him that if he writes something she likes, she will marry him. In the beginning he ony writes letters, the real writing of a book, hasn’t really started.

Finally he finishes a stroy called “the pension Grillparzer” Helen really likes it. She also read Jenny’s book and she really liked that too. Garp finishes a whole book, Procrastination. Jenny and Garp fly back to the U.S. and Helen and Garp get married. Jenny and Garp find a publisher for their books. His name is John Wolf. Jenny’s book turns out to be a huge succes. It is found to be a controversial book about feminsme. Jenny doesn’t really like this label but she does like it that her book is such a succes. She has a lot of fans, including a group of women who call themselves Ellen Jamesians, after a girl who got raped and got her tongue cut off. The women have also cut their tongues off and aren’t able to say a word. Garp finds them really weird but his mom takes care of everyone. She becomes very popular, even the nurse dress she always wears is copied by many women.

Garps book doesn’t become as succesfull as his mom’s work but it isn’t a failure either.

Garp and Helen have a child, a boy called Duncan and Jenny and Garp move.

Onde day, Garp hears that Cushie Percy has died in childbirth. He calls Stewart Percy to offer his condolences but what he doesn’t know is that Cushie died motns before, and he is calling Percy on the day Bonkers died. Stewart thinks that tis is another one of Garps cruel jokes.

Garp writes a second novel, called “Second Wind of the Cuckold”, the success of it is smaller than that of his first novel, and Helen takes on a second job.

Their friends, the Fletchers, have marital problems and the Garps try to help them. But this doesn’t really work out. For a while, Garp is involved with Alice and Helen with Harrison Fletcher.

Jenny introduces them to Roberta Muldoon, she used to be a man and a famous football player but she got surgery and now she’s a woman, and Jenny’s bodyguard. Garp and Roberta become close friends and play a lot of squash together

Helen and Garp have a second child, a boy again, they call him Walt. Because Helen works a lot, Garp takes care of the house keeping. He cookes, cleans the house, does the laundry and takes care of the children. He is often very worried about them and when Duncan spends the night at a friends house, he doesn’t trust it because he thinks the mom is verry sloppy and isn’t able to take good care of her child. He goes there in the middle of the night and finds the house to be very dirty. The mother is drunk and tries to seduce him but he doesn’t fall for it and takes Duncan home.

One day he finds Helen reading a story written by one of her students, called Michael Milton. He isn’t like Garp at all and that is what attracts Helen to Michael. An ex-girlfriend of Michael tells Garp that his wife is having an affaire. Garp is very angry and forbids Helen to see Michael again and tells her to phone Michael to break with him. He gives Helen the time for it by taking the children to a movie but he calls to their house to check if she’s still home. When she doesn’t answere the phone he drives home like a maniac though the weather is very bad. He crashes into Michales car, Helen and Michael are inside of it. Walt is killed and Garp, Helen Duncan and Michael are seriously injured. The Garps move to Jennys house and she nurses them.

While the family gets well, Garp starts writing again. In his new novel he puts all his grief. While he is writing the book, Helen and Garp have a third child, a girl and they call her Jenny. John Wolf reads the first chapter of Garp’s new book, but he really dislikes it and doesn’t want to publish it.

There’s a woman called Jillsy Sloper, she cleans John’s office and he often gives her a novel to criticize it. She reads Garp’s new book and she doesn’t like it but she isn’t able to put it away and finishes it, something she rarely does, so John decides to publish the book anyway. John writes the jackets of the book himself and is afraid that Garp won’t approve them. He is also affraid of bad reviews and he advices the Garps to go on a holiday abroard.They decide to go to Vienna and they have a great time there, until Roberta calls them to tell that Jenny Fields got killed, someone shot her. The Garps fly immediately back home.

The funeral that is organised for Jenny will be the first feminist funeral ever, and not even Garp is allowed to come, but Roberta dresses him in women’s clothes to make sure no-one will recognise him. But Bainbridge Percy, Cushie’s younger sister recognises him anyway. She accuses him of murdering her sister.

Garp runs away and takes the next plane home. On the plane he meets the real Ellen James. She lost her parents a little while ago and she was on her way to see Jenny Fields. Garp allows her to come and live with his family.

When he is back at steerings, the dean tells him that both Stewart Percy and Helen’s father have just died.

The Garps decide to stay at Steering. Helen will teach and Garp will be the new wrestler coach. Jenny’s house is turned into a foundation supporting all women with problems that is runned by Roberta.. Garp wants to keep the Ellen Jamesians out of the house because he thinks they’re insane.

One day Garp is training with his wrestling team in the gym. Helen is also there, she is reading a book in the corner of the room. Then Bainbridge Percy wakls in and killes Garp by shooting him.

Helen lives to be quite old and never remarries. Roberta looks after Duncan. Ellen James becomes a writer. Jenny Garp outlives all the others and becomes a doctor.