The World According To Garp

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1978

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-4

Chapters 5-9

Chapters 10-14

Chapters 15-19

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Chapters 10-14Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 10 Summary: “The Dog in the Alley, the Child in the Sky”

Garp is unhappy that Duncan is at Ralph’s house. He channels his frustration into brainstorming stories for Walt. He tells him a story about a dog in Vienna who is tied up in an alley until he pursues a cat and gets hit by a car.

Plagued by anxiety, Garp can’t sleep, and he wanders around the house to check on Helen and Walt. He considers how unpleasant it is to realize that Duncan’s bad breath reminds him that his children will die one day. Garp dreams of the dog from his made-up story and then dreams that he and Duncan are on an airplane. They are both drawn to an open door, and both get sucked out into the sky.

Chapter 11 Summary: “Mrs. Ralph”

Anxious after his dream, Garp decides to go to Ralph’s house to check on Duncan. He wears his usual running ensemble of shorts and no shirt and jogs over, nearly colliding with a woman on a bicycle. Through the window, he sees Duncan and Ralph sleeping in front of the TV. Mrs. Ralph (he does not know her real name) emerges in a kimono. She requests his help to get her lover out of her house. Garp removes the young hippie, and Mrs. Ralph tries to thank him by seducing him. He turns her down but isn’t totally happy with his decision. She cries because he doesn’t have an erection upon seeing her naked body, and he wills himself into having one. She is still upset, and he decides to clean her kitchen as penance.

Helen calls the Ralph residence, and Garp answers. Helen is sure that Garp and Mrs. Ralph are sleeping together. Garp decides to bring Duncan home and throws him over his shoulder with Duncan still in the sleeping bag. They are stopped by the police on their way home; the bicyclist that Garp almost ran into earlier reported him. The police also have Mrs. Ralph’s young lover in the back seat, and he is eager to discredit Garp in front of the cops. The cops recognize Garp as the savior of the Mustache Kid’s victim in the park, so they let him go. When Garp and Duncan arrive home, Helen is furious and asks Duncan prodding questions to find out if Garp was sleeping with Mrs. Ralph.

Chapter 12 Summary: “It Happens to Helen”

Garp learns from his mother that Cushie Percy died in childbirth. There was a miscommunication, and he thinks that it just happened. He calls her father to offer his condolences, and Stewie is furious. It turns out that Cushie died months previously, but Bonkers actually died shortly before Garp called.

Garp receives a late-night phone call from Roberta, who is in tears because another boyfriend has left her. Roberta laments her gender confirmation surgery because men are terrible. Roberta makes late-night calls more and more frequently, and while Helen was initially annoyed by these, Garp notices that she starts to answer them covertly herself.

Garp finds Helen downstairs at 2:00 a.m. reading a paper by one of her students, Michael Milton. He is a pretentious graduate student with inflated self-esteem. He is very different from Garp, and Helen mostly feels attracted to him because he is so different from her husband. Helen is annoyed by many of Garp’s quirks, including the risky way that he enters their driveway. They argue over divisions of labor and cannot agree on whose job it is to fix the pointed gearshift in the car.

Michael tries to court Helen, and she toys with the idea of having an affair with him. She reads more of his work and tries to find excuses to spend time with him. Garp suddenly feels threatened by this since she is always his first reader and now she is reading someone else. Determined to win back her attention and affection, Garp quickly writes a story for Helen to read. Helen realizes that she wants her husband to pay attention to her for her, and not for her ability to critique his writing.

Helen reads Garp’s story, “Vigilance,” which describes a man who, like Garp, runs through his neighborhood in pursuit of speeding cars. He encounters a plumber who is a dangerous driver and does his best to keep him from continuing. Helen is not impressed by the story and is not pleased to hear that his next novel will also have autobiographical elements.

Feeling guilty, Helen performs oral sex on Garp, who is dreaming of Mrs. Ralph.

Chapter 13 Summary: “Walt Catches Cold”

Garp panics because Walt has a cold. He dreams of horrors happening to his children. He has a dream that his children are killed by falling bombs while he is distracted by a pornographic magazine.

Helen decides to pursue an affair with Michael. She tries to control the affair as much as she can and requests that he buy a car so that they can drive to his apartment. She confronts him about his other girlfriend, Margie Tallworth, but panics when Margie drops her class.

Garp wonders about the bruises on Helen but decides that they must be from him. Margie debates what she should do and eventually goes to Garp’s house with a letter that tells him Helen is having an affair. She spies on Garp and his children for a while, but she chickens out. He assumes that her note must show that she is a member of the Ellen James Society and is surprised when she speaks. She panics and drops the note, and Garp reads it. Garp is angry and forgetful during his usual afternoon routine. He and Walt pick up Duncan from soccer practice, and Mrs. Ralph accosts them on their way home to ask if they have seen Ralph. Garp completely forgets about making dinner, which confuses his children. When Helen comes home, he hides in the bathtub to avoid her. Duncan and Walt are further confused by their parents’ fighting.

Garp urges Helen to break up with Michael. He takes the boys to a movie and tells Helen to end the affair that night. Michael comes to pick up Helen and is completely distraught at the thought of ending the affair. Michael pushes Helen to perform oral sex on him, and she convinces herself that if she does this, he’ll leave her alone.

Impatient, Garp and the kids leave the movie early. Garp goes up the driveway at his usual risky speed.

Chapter 14 Summary: “The World According to Marcus Aurelius”

The Garp family is now staying with Jenny at the Fields estate at Dog’s Head Harbor. When Garp’s car collided in the driveway with Michael’s car, Duncan lost an eye on the pointed gear shift. Helen broke her collarbone and bit off most of Michael’s penis. Garp broke his jaw and tore his tongue. Like the women of the Ellen James Society, he is now forced to communicate by writing notes. During his period of convalescence, Duncan decides he wants to be an artist. Helen is forced to resign from her professorship. Roberta helps the family and discusses her love life and gender frustrations with Garp. Garp and Helen fight a lot.

Many women arrive at Dog’s Head to seek help from Jenny. The police arrive with Mrs. Ralph’s young hippie lover; he has told them that he will stay with Garp. The abusive ex of a woman named Laurel shows up and demands she come home with him. Roberta tackles him and Jenny is devastated that Laurel chooses to go home with him.

The Fletchers visit, and Garp and Helen confide in them. Garp and Helen reminisce about Walt, and it is revealed that he was killed in the car accident. Garp and Helen have sex for the first time since the accident.

Chapters 10-14 Analysis

As Garp and Helen’s marriage is put to the test, Garp considers if his views on nontraditional gender roles deserve to be questioned. Irving shows that no marriage is truly perfect and depicts several married people who profess to be operating with the best interests of their spouse in mind but really are operating very selfishly.

Irving confirms the intimacy of the written word, showing that the marriage of Helen and Garp is totally dependent on Helen serving as Garp’s primary reader and critic. Their bond is founded on Garp believing that Helen prioritizes reading his writing over anyone else’s; the introduction of Michael Milton compromises Garp’s conviction not only in the strength of his marriage but also in his own writing ability. Why would Helen be reading someone else’s words if Garp’s were adequate enough to sustain her attention? Garp’s writing prowess becomes inextricably linked with his sexual prowess, and if his confidence in one area suffers, so too does his performance in the other.

Garp uses literature as a means of introspection and reflection, and the harder he tries to resist the incorporation of autobiographical elements, the more irresistible he finds this urge. Garp’s most autobiographical pieces are also his weakest, reflecting his inability to understand the meaning of his own life, and Irving makes use of the embedded narrative so that the reader can also make this judgment for themselves (though Helen’s assessment is always very accurate).

The intimacy of the written word is further confirmed by Garp’s necessary foray into communicating through notes. He frequently mocks the Ellen Jamesians’ choice to live without tongues and regards their notes that they pass to him with derision (he even acts rudely toward Margie when she is trying to deliver her note to him). However, after the accident, Garp’s broken jaw forces him to also communicate by note. He recognizes the irony but is not shamed into being kinder to the Ellen Jamesians; rather, he views his convalescent period as generating a feeling of horrific impotence, and he cannot believe that anyone would choose to voluntarily live in such a way that renders them powerless. He fears that this feeling of powerlessness will dominate other areas of his life.

Irving elaborates on the thematic orientation of anxiety, showing how once anxiety dominates one facet of your life, it very easily takes over the rest of it. Garp has anxiety about Mrs. Ralph being an unfit parent and does not think she is qualified to host a sleepover with his son; this fear drives him to her house in the middle of the night, setting off a chain of events that cause far more problems for him than if he had simply stayed home. He dreams that his children will die by bomb because he was too distracted looking at pornography to pay attention to the skies and save them, revealing his anxiety about the competing impulse in him to be a caretaker and be sexually potent.

Garp’s guilt and anxiety is sometimes almost performative; he feels that since he spends so much time thinking about ways that things can go wrong, he does not need to take action to prevent things going wrong. Because he is plagued by nightmares about ways that his children can die, he does not actively make changes or improvements that can guarantee their safety. Garp would rather fight with Helen over whose turn it is to take in the car to get the gearshift fixed than actually fix it; he is so consumed by his own thoughts that he does not bother to see that this real-world threat poses a significant danger to his children. Garp does not believe it is necessary to change his dangerous preferred way of driving up the driveway, believing himself to be the superior parent because his dreams are filled with other ways that harm can befall his children.

Garp’s anxiety drives a wedge between him and Helen as their system of labor divisions (which once sustained them) proves to no longer be feasible. Helen needs more attention than Garp is willing to provide. Even when she tries to demonstrate a sex drive equal to that of her husband, she is shut down. He constantly prioritizes himself over her: “‘I want to be loved,’ Helen told Garp […] ‘Read the story, Helen,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll get laid’ […] Garp’s manner of courtship was suddenly offensive to her” (273). Garp still divides women into wives and “whores”—he expects Helen to satisfy the role of attendant wife before considering her as a sexual partner—and though he certainly values his wife’s intelligence, he finds it hard to believe that she has physical and emotional needs similar to his own.

Within this section of the novel, men use sex as a means of self-satisfaction, and women use sex as a means of validation, reconciliation, and escape from danger. Helen tries to seduce her husband because she wants confirmation that all is right in their marriage, and his rejection of her (and his prioritization of his writing over her needs) causes her considerable anxiety. Michael provides an outlet of validating sexuality for Helen; she is not that attracted to him, but he can give her what Garp will not. Mrs. Ralph tries to seduce Garp in the hopes that she will enjoy that experience more than her night with her young hippie lover. Laurel chooses to go back to her abusive boyfriend, prioritizing their union over her physical safety. Helen also uses sex as a vehicle to try to ensure her physical safety. Even though she does not want to have sex with Michael when she is trying to break up with him, she worries that he will harm her and tries to convince herself that performing oral sex on him will allow her to get away from him. Garp constantly validates his lustful encounters by claiming that they do not mean anything; for the women around him, sex always has more meaning, becoming a gift, weapon, or escape.