The World According to Garp Themes
Women and Femininity
The World According to Garp isn't just a novel about feminism written by a man; it's a novel about a novel about feminism written by a man. Brains officially melted, right? Throughout the book, we...
Men and Masculinity
The World According to Garp is manlier than Macho Man Randy Savage and Chuck Norris combined—but that may not be a good thing. While the novel often focuses on women's issues, we're also present...
Mortality
For T.S. Garp, the fear of death is far worse than death itself. Throughout The World According to Garp, we see how his obsession with mortality both drives him forward and holds him back. Sure, Ga...
Memory and the Past
Memory's a funny thing, and sometimes the thing that feels true isn't the thing that actually happened. The World According to Garp examines this idea through the eyes of T.S. Garp, a writer with a...
Literature and Writing
Books about books are the best books—or so we think around these parts. In The World According to Garp, we follow the life of T.S. Garp, an ambitious young writer with a lot on his plate. First o...
Lust
By our unofficial count, The World According to Garp features the word lust roughly 17,281 times. Okay—we might be exaggerating a smidgen, but you get the picture. The book follows two characters...
Marriage
Dearly Shmoop-loved, we are gathered here today to witness the turbulent marriage of T.S. Garp and Helen Holm in The World According to Garp, two young idealists who thought they had everything fig...
Fear
In The World According to Garp, the only thing Garp has to fear is Garp himself. Although T.S. Garp is a wild young boy himself, he grows up to be the most paranoid parent in the world. It doesn't...