Apparently, he was referring to the ten-year-old in the city park, to the eleven year-old Ellen James and her terrible society-his mother's wounded women with their symbolic, self-inflicted speechlessness. I feel uneasy, Garp wrote, that my life has come in contact with so many rapes. In a central passage in the novel, Garp reflects on the significance of rape: He understands it from a woman's rather than the usual male point of view. These two scenes present rape in its 'true terror and brutality.' But they are also important because they demonstrate Garp's new awareness of the meaning of rape. The significant point about this novel within the novel is that Irving tells it from the woman's point of view, making it perfectly clear that rape is nothing but a brutal violation of a human being, that Hope Standish has the right to defend herself to the death, the rapist's death. The second scene is in the first chapter of Garp's novel 'The World According to Bensenhaver.' This chapter is a powerful, detailed description of the terrifying rape of Hope Standish who manages heroically to slash the rapist to death with his own knife. His response is to break down crying: 'The sky was grey, dead leaves were all around them, and when Garp began to wail aloud, the girl picked up his T-shirt and covered herself with it.'(1) Garp's initial sorrow gives way to outrage as he wildly searches the park to find and capture the rapist.

While running in the park Garp finds a ten year-old who has just been raped. The novel explores the issue in two powerful and unforgettable scenes. praised Irving 'for writing about rape with its true terror and brutality.' Rape is indeed a central issue in Irving's Garp. They have made Irving's The World According to Garp into a man's world after all. Tesich, its screenwriter, and Hill, the director, have taken a novel which presents a world of characters significantly altered by the ideas of the women's movement and have magically returned both the themes and the characters to their safe, traditional places. Lust, rape, new relationships between men and women, new definitions of fatherhood and manhood-these are the issues in Irving's Garp. Something indeed has been lost in the change of medium: the message. Steve Tesich and George Roy Hill have succeeded in transforming John Irving's powerful, darkly comic 'feminist' novel into an insipid, safe and sentimental 'masculine' film. The World According to Garp is a remarkable achievement. Integrating feminism as a major philosophical theme for writing about rape with its true horror and brutality for creating male characters who care about kids and for understanding that feminist excesses are funny.-' Ms. John Irving, author of the novels The World According to Garp and Hotel New Hampshire: for Script: Steve Tesich,īased an the novel by John Irving. The World According to Garp THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARPĭirector: Goarge Roy Hill.

Novel the world according to garp