Lust, one of the main themes of The World According to Garp

Rachel K.

Since sex is besides death one of the thematic obsessions in Irving’s The World According to Garp, he is able to mirror the different opinions concerning sexuality and lust, through Jenny Fields on the one side and through Garp on the other side. Lust is a major theme in The World According to Garp. Garp, one of the main characters, is overcome by lust throughout the story. Between Helen, who later becomes his wife, prostitutes in Vienna, and sleeping with another man’s wife, he lets lust consume him at various points in the story.

John Irving’s novel The World According to Garp gives the reader a view on the lives of its characters and, as a part of it, their attitudes towards lust and sexuality. The description of these aspects is very direct and may be offensive for some more conservative persons. Even for persons who tend to be liberal-minded, Irving’s way of writing about sex can be uncommon, although he uses lust and sexuality only to tell the story and not for sensational reasons. Despite the fact that people expected more from the sexual liberation in the 1960s and 1970s, there was indeed a change in attitude towards certain aspects, such as premarital and extramarital sex. Another important change which derived from the liberation movement was the new female sexuality, especially concerning the sexual fulfillment of women before and during marriage. This is also proved by a decreasing support of the “double standard”, where men are more or less allowed to be sexual active, including premarital and even extramarital sex, but women are not.

In such an unpredictable and therefore uncontrollable world, the most ambiguous of all forces will be the most basic: sex. According to Garp, "Human sexuality makes farcical our most serious intentions" (p. 224). So we have here the splendid symbol of Roberta Muldoon, the six-foot, four-inch former tight end for the Philadelphia Eagles. She has paid for her sex-change operation with lecture fees from men’s and boy’s club banquets. Further, she is pronounced by Jenny Fields, Garp’s mother, as less sexually ambiguous than most. She retains, nevertheless, her instinctive ability to clip a menacing male in such a way as to produce the maximum knee injury—the kind that once would have earned her a fifteen-yard penalty. She articulates her discoveries about the sexes succinctly: "Oh, I didn’t know what shits men were till I became a woman" (p. 305). She alone dies perfectly, absolutely happy.

In this world in which clear sexual rules and distinctions constantly, absurdly, blur, a son goes "a grieving ex-wrestler in drag for his mother’s funeral" (p. 492). The most dutiful husband and the best father around still seduces babysitters and best friends and still yearns for the aging body of the worst mother in town. The wife who is usually faithful by choice still engages in two extended and disastrous affairs. Lust is followed by more lust, but deviance from straight-and-narrow monogamy is still punished as if by all the furies. In Irving’s most stunning and realistically explained episode, the very climax of all the carefully woven themes of the book, the wife’s adultery damages everyone severely. But as life imitates dreams, so a jealous husband’s ultimate fantasy comes true. His wife’s lover loses his penis. All of it, eventually, after she accidentally bites it off.

Nothing in this world is sacred, safe, or intact for long. According to Garp. "Hope is . . . a strong survivor of a weak man’s world" (p. 447), but "Everything has really happened sometime" and "every story can be improved" (p. 458). In Jenny’s famous sentence, "In this dirty-minded world you are either somebody’s wife or somebody’s whore—or fast on your way to becoming one or the other" (p. 157). In Garp’s world, a lusty young couple can feel they’ve skipped middle age and moved to retirement, for they find that the world is a barely firm sponge.

The World According to Garp is concerned with all the various types of love. The love between parents and children is demonstrated first by the relationship between Jenny and Garp and then by the relationship Helen and Garp have with their children. Garp loves his children so powerfully that he is overprotective. Irving also examines the love between husband and wife. Garp and Helen love each other so fiercely that their marriage is able to withstand several catastrophes. There are also many loving friendships in the book; for instance, Garp and Roberta Muldoon become extremely close and loving friends. The novel also examines the nature of lust. Garp believes that his mother is somewhat cold because she doesn't experience lust, but Jenny recognizes that lust can often be disastrous. She takes care of dozens of women at Dog's Head Harbor who have been victims of lust. Garp's own life is affected by lust. First of all, Garp contracts gonorrhea in Austria when he runs into a trio of American tourists and he can't control his baser instincts. Garp also threatens his marriage when he has brief flings with babysitters. Finally, Helen's lust leads her into an affair that almost destroys the family.