The World According to Garp Characters

Although we like the guy, even we must admit that T.S. Garp can be a bit insufferable at times. As we come to learn, Garp struggles to empathize with people outside his close-knit community. His ch...

Although The World According to Garp is ostensibly about Mr. Garp—it's named after the dude, after all—it's really the story of Jenny Fields. Say what? Stick with us and we'll explain.A Full Li...

With the novel's focus on Garp, it's easy to forget how important Helen is. Over the course of the plot, she transforms from an obsessive over-planner into a mature and strong woman, and as she mak...

Alice and Harrison are a gender-reversed, parallel-universe version of Garp and Helen. Just slap a mustache on them and they'd be evil twins.Alice, like Garp, is a writer. In fact, Garp seems quite...

Dean Bodger is one of the few father figures in Garp's early life.We learn this in the aftermath of Garp's rooftop accident. Bodger lectures Garp, telling him to never "ever disappoint your mother"...

Duncan is Garp and Helen's first child, and he grows up to be one odd bird.In many ways, he's a lot like his father. They're both artists; they both marry spouses who make them believe in their cre...

At first, we only know Ellen James as the inspiration behind the Ellen Jamesians. And guess what? Garp hates the Ellen Jamesians. He has a strong distaste for political radicalism in any form, even...

If Ernie had a theme song, it'd the sad music from Charlie Brown. The poor guy gets no breaks. His wife leaves him and then, when he meets an amazing woman—Jenny Fields—he realizes that she has...

We never really get to know Jenny Garp, but as her name implies, she's the perfect mix between her grandmother and her father.Like her famous grandmother, Jenny Garp commits herself to nursing and...

In a book filled to the brim with feminists, intellectuals, and tough women, John Wolf is a "a careful, conscientious [...] even elegant man" (19.191)He's got everything going for him. Runs a succe...

Michael is very insecure, and this insecurity leads him to do some pretty horrible things.The guy has a carefully crafted image. Although Michael's just your average wealthy Northeasterner, he's re...

It's telling that we don't learn Mrs. Ralph's real name until after Garp's death—despite his feminist upbringing, Garp has an unsettling tendency to objectify the women that he's attracted to.Mrs...

In a book all about gender, Roberta has a better understanding of the subject than most.Although we learn a lot about Roberta, we're never introduced to her former identity: Robert Muldoon, standou...

The Percys are like the Malfoys: old-money snobs who think that "blood" is the only thing that matters. Despite their conflicts, Garp shares many formative memories with their judgmental clan.He lo...

Let's take care of the elephant in the room: Walt's death is a huge bummer. In the chapter leading up to it, Garp is anxiety-ridden about his youngest son, but we learn to laugh it off. "Garp's jus...