The World According To John Irving

I'd like to focus this blog post on the afterword in the novel which consists of a short message to the reader from John Irving relating to his novel. Below are some of the final few paragraphs which hold the most importance.

"'No, my dad isn't Garp,' Colin replied, 'but my father's fears are Garp's fears--they are any father's fears.'

So that's what The World According to Garp is about--a father's fears. As such, the novel is and isn't 'autobiographical.'"

"When Garp was published, people who'd lost children wrote to me. 'I lost one, too,' they told me. I confessed to them that I hadn't lost any children. I'm just a father with a good imagination. In my imagination, I lose my children every day."

I smiled when I read this, partially because I felt a sense of confirmation that I had accurately understood one of the themes, and partially because this is why Garp's character seems so lifelike. Garp always spoke of how a writer's job was to observe the surroundings and capture life onto paper, and Irving succeeds. Through Irving's own flaws, fears, joys, interests, and life, Garp is created.

It's become very evident how many of the events in the book are based directly off of John Irving's life. The fear for children, the fear of death, the fear of lust, and the fear of the dreaded "Under Toad", a being that consists of all the dangers and threats combined. Even the sinister "Under Toad" and the story of Walt's experience with it comes straight from John Irving's son, who mistook the undertow of the ocean for a terrible monster that looms over the life of everyone.

And lastly in closing, we see John Irving clinging onto his children through fear even in the final paragraph of the afterword; just one last sign that Garp and Irving share the same fears, the same fears that every human being is all too familiar with, but also the very same fears that unite us and bring us together to overcome any challenge.