The World According To Garp Revisited: After 40 Years, Why It’s Still Relevant

By Ty Ross

In 1982, John Irving’s ‘78 best-selling novel, The World According to Garp, made its debut on the big screen. Starring Glenn Close as Jenny Fields, Robin Williams as her son Garp, and John Lithgow as the lovable and level-headed best friend and protector of them both, the movie was a critical and commercial success.

Where Garp succeeded then (and now), is that it manages to deal with controversial issues such as single motherhood, the women’s rights movement, gender roles, sexual identity, and violence against women not just with care and compassion, but without being condescending or patronizing to the audience. Nor does it preach. All of the characters, even the good guys, are flawed. As in humanity and real life. Something in today’s age of passing the buck, victim politics and lack of accountability, is important to be reminded of.

Over the past decade or so, with women rising in the corporate world and many choosing to get advanced degrees, they have increasingly become the ones earning a higher income. Or what some may call being ‘the breadwinner’. Add the rising costs of daycare to that equation, it is nonsensical for both parents to work outside the home. You would think the one earning less seems the most logical choice to stay home, but to those in opposition to that dynamic, it’s only ok if the one staying home is the woman.

The World According to Garp challenges this. Garp’s wife Helen, a college professor, works while he stays home. He not only takes care of their two sons, cleans the house and cooks- he does it proudly. For Garp and Helen, there is no issue. And at no time is it insinuated that Garp’s role as husband and father is in any way diminished, or that his influence as the man of the house is any less because he stays home.

Today, in 2021, there are still debates raging about a woman’s ‘place’. Those on the right, and certain religious groups continue to blame feminism and women working, on the breakdown of the family structure and anything else they deem to be a threat to what they consider to be traditional family values. But what Garp and Helen show, is that traditional family values are the ones that work best for your family. Not anyone else’s.

Which brings me to Jenny Fields. Nurse, mother of Garp and the unintentional shero of the feminist movement. After publishing her book, the Sexual Suspect, Jenny becomes the face of, not just sexual freedom, but the freedom from sex as well. A woman who famously said, “You are either someone’s wife or someone’s whore. And if you’re not either, people think there is something wrong with you. But there is nothing wrong with me.” If keep your hands off my vagina, and my uterus were a person- it would be Jenny Fields. A woman who wanted so much to be autonomous in the raising of a child without any input, support or interference from a man, that she went so far as to have sex with one on his death bed to ensure that fact.

And who could forget Roberta Muldoon? The transgender ex-NFL player who, in my opinion, is the glue that holds Garp and Jenny together. Always in a positive mood, she was a symbol of both grace and acceptance. Unlike many movies during that time, and even now, LGBTQ characters serve as little more than props. Comic relief or caricatures. She was who she was. Unapologetically so. That the story didn’t harp on who she used to be, rather than who she is as a woman was incredibly refreshing. One of my favorite scenes is when Garp and his sons are playing with Roberta in the yard. That they love their Aunt Roberta and see her as nothing else, was a bold move. Being transgender wasn’t, isn’t about sex or sexuality. If we treated those who are transgender as individuals and not causes then we would be closer to removing the stigma that is attached. It is sad a movie made four decades ago, treated that fact with more compassion than many do today.

Garp, Jenny and Roberta undoubtedly are fixtures in both the novel and movie, but the one character who can be overlooked is that of Ellen James. Her importance to the thread of The World According to Garp, violence against women, and the right to live peacefully free of harm of predatory, abusive and misogynistic men, gets lost in protest. She makes a brief, but pivotal appearance in the movies towards to the end. Thanking Garp for his support of her, and giving her a voice through the telling of her story in a biography, and why the Jamesians are wrong. Doing more harm than good to Ellen, and what she went through by refusing to listen to her.

Ellen Jamesians are women who, in a show of solidarity with Ellen James, cut out there tongues as was done Ellen’s by the men who raped her when she was a child. They took her tongue to silence her. Quell her voice. Yet the women who were mutilating their own bodies in supposed support for James, were doing so against her wishes and protest. They, like the men didn’t listen. The cause became more about them than her. One might say there are parallels to the Black Lives Matter movement of last summer. While most were peaceful, they were eclipsed by stories of looting and rioting in major cities across the country. At what point does the protest overshadow the cause? There needs to be balance, but there also needs to be communication.

The men who were against Jenny Fields, and what she stood for and the Ellen Jamesians and what they stood for were so far apart from each other that unfortunately there was no room for compromise or conversation. Both sides so filled with hate for what they considered to be wrongs done them. Real or perceived.

Culminating in an ending that was unexpected then, but in today’s world would be all to familiar. An anti-feminist man shoots and kills Jenny Fields at a rally for a political candidate she is endorsing. This only furthers the divide between the Jamesians, and their male counterparts. Including Garp. They are so full of anger, that they bar their hero’s only child and son from her funeral. Out of desperation, Garp attends dressed as a woman, but is found out. One of his mother’s supporters is so filled with rage that she shoots him.

And this is how it ends. A story that begins with a mother’s desire for independence, and unconditional love for her son. Curiosity, and exploration. Leaving only death, anger and destruction behind. Fast forward to today, and it’s almost like the movie was frozen in time. Picking up where it left off in today’s society. With two sides, opposite each other. Glaring, yelling, dismissing and refusing to acknowledge each other.
But the question is, where do we go from here? How do we get off this merry-go-round of blame, and begin to rebuild and move forward so that we aren’t right back here 40 yrs from now?

Check out Ty’s book THE POWER OF PERSPECTIVE. It’s a collection of affirmations she wrote to get her through a difficult time in her life. Words of wisdom that apply to anyone, and everyone, to get through the hard times. If you’re questioning yourself, and need a reminder that you are in control… Click HERE to order your copy.

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