A First Look and First Impressions

I’ll be honest, I basically began reading The World According To Garp with no prior knowledge or idea of what it contained. After my original requested books were already taken, I simply signed up for the first blank I saw. Fortunately for me, The World According to Garp immediately proved itself to be much more than just another boring and stale piece of literature.

The initial reaction to the style of narration shown in the first chapter was a little confusing at first. The author narrates the book, but quotes and stories from both T.S. Garp and Jenny Fields are embedded to create the story. This provides three separate point of views that enhance the reading, and show insight into the main character’s thoughts and emotions.

Introduced, as the focus in the first chapter is Jenny Fields, a feminist and strong willed nurse, with an outlook on society that often reminded me of Catcher in the Rye’s Holden Caulfield. While her general pessimism and strange morals make her a bizarre person, they make for fantastic and entertaining characteristics of Jenny in the story. One of the oddest motives of Jenny in the first chapter is that she wishes to have a child, but wants nothing to do with a man.

This quickly turns into a running joke at the hospital, after several men approach and volunteer to impregnate her. Jenny turns them all down for various reasons, ranging from not wanting to be with a man who “obviously lacked confidence; she wanted a child who would be more secure than that”, to refusing to have a baby with an anesthesiologist because “his eyes were too close together, and his teeth were poorly formed; she would not want to saddle her would-be child with such handicaps.” The hospital staff soon began to distance themselves from Jenny and her odd objective by moving her to the intensive care unit. Here among the devastation and brutal consequences brought about by the war, Jenny would find Technical Sergeant Garp.

Garp was injured in the war and suffered severe brain damage, resulting in a near complete loss of speech, aside from uttering “Garp”. Jenny sees him as a perfect candidate to help her have a child. In a somewhat shocking move, Jenny rapes Garp and secretly impregnates herself. Garp’s brain continues to deteriorate in a manner that Jenny described as a backwards-aging process. What was initially the intelligence and naivety of a young child has turned into a baby in the womb, curled up in the fetal position, until eventually, Garp died. Jenny would go on to name her son “Garp” in honor of the boy’s father, and use the first initials “T.S.”, which stood for “Technical Sergeant”.

Clearly this is a unique and unordinary book, with a storyline I’m anxious to uncover.