In the following essay, Harter and Thompson discuss Irving's use of narrative technique and point of view in The World according to Garp, concluding that the novel effectively integrates a comic-tragic worldview within a traditional family saga.

In the following essay, Miller offers a critical analysis of The World according to Garp in regards to the development of Irving's writing style throughout the novel and throughout his career.

In the following essay, Shostak analyses how Irving's body of work—particularly The World according to Garp—displays his tragic-comic vision, narrative technique, fictional form, and recurring motifs.

In the following essay, McKay examines the dual narrative voice of T. S. Garp as both biographer and fiction writer in The World according to Garp.

In the following essay, Wilson claims John Irving 's The World According to Garp as an example of postmodern literature precisely because it borrows stylistically from such diverse writers as James Joyce, John Cheever, and John Barth.

In the following essay, McKay examines the dual narrative voice of Garp as both biographer and fiction writer. According to McKay, "the narrator's struggle with the languages of fiction and biography is the mirror image of Garp's struggle as a writer with the forces of memory and imagination."

In the following interview, originally conducted on November 9, 1979, Irving discusses the writing of The World according to Garp and the effect that the novel has had on his work and career.

In the following essay, Campbell provides an overview of the plot structure, setting, character development, and major themes in The World according to Garp.

In the following essay, Wilson examines the postmodern construction of The World according to Garp, particularly the novel's elements of metafiction, irony, and the gothic bizarre.

In the following excerpt, Carton examines "the issue of the individual's uncertain identity and political complicity" in The World According to Garp.

In the following essay, Wilson examines the postmodern construction of The World According to Garp, particularly elements of metafiction, irony, and the gothic bizarre in the novel.

In the following essay, Bawer compares the novel The World according to Garp to the film adaptation, asserting that the film maintains the major thematic elements of Irving's novel but presents them from a more optimistic perspective.

In the following essay, Horton compares the novel The World according to Garp to the film adaptation directed by George Roy Hill, suggesting that the film effectively preserves the spirit of the novel while adding a comic sense of the triumph of the human spirit which remains absent from Irving's novel.

In the following essay, Doane and Hodges examine the portrayal of strong female characters and feminist issues in The World According to Garp. Providing a feminist analysis of the novel, Doane and Hodges assert that "Garp protects narrative conventions and with them reinforces patriarchal power."

In the following essay, Lounsberry posits that The World according to Garp functions primarily as a social satire in which excess and extremism—particularly in the realms of sex, sexual politics, parenting, and the imagination—eventually lead to violence and destruction.

In the following review, Bell extols Irving's treatment of the importance of family and the power of personal history in The World according to Garp, noting that the novel represents a definite break from recent literary trends.

In the following essay, Cosgrove asserts that The World according to Garp bucks the literary trends of experimentation popular in the late twentieth century and revives the storytelling forms and techniques of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

In the following review, Malone asserts that Irving is successful in his blending of comedy and pain in The World according to Garp, praising Irving's treatment of gender roles, family, and the function of the imagination in fiction writing.

In the following review, Des Pres examines Irving's treatment of feminism, family, and gender in The World according to Garp, describing the work as “brilliant” and “disquieting.”

In the following review, Goodman contends that Irving uses an effective blend of violence, horror, and humor in The World according to Garp.

[Irving's] first three novels gave him the reputation of an interesting but minor writer. ("Garp," thinks the hero of Irving's next novel, "hated the reputation of 'small but serious.'") Commercially, he appeared to be one of those novelists who would eventually have to be published by an outfit like the Fiction Collective. Then, in 1978, along came The World According to Garp, a success both critical and commercial. People not only bought this, Irving...

In the following excerpt, Wood asserts that The World according to Garp is an intelligent and amusing novel, commenting on Irving's unique treatment of a writer's perceptions of reality.

In the following review, Larson discusses the central themes of sex, marriage, and parenthood in The World according to Garp, calling the work “one of the most original (and readable) novels of the last few years.”

In the following review, King praises the elements of macabre farce in The World according to Garp, but faults the novel for its lack of a central organizing theme.

In the following review, Jamal describes The World according to Garp as a deeply inventive narrative that blends elements of nightmare and farce in its creation of an American “puritan folk-hero.”

[The World According to Garp] is not merely a book about writing a book: in the first chapters, [Irving's] defensive, distancing techniques strike more than the reality of the subject matter; it is only gradually that the meaning is released. This is just as well, for the book contains almost intolerable pain. It is a bloody package, and if he had flung this in front of us we would have backed away in horror. As it is, we read on, at first entertained, then puzzled, then trapped, wanting to look away...

In the following review, Grumbach argues that Irving subtly and persuasively treats themes concerning the absurdity of modern life in The World according to Garp, describing it as an “imaginative feast.”

In the following review, Disch argues that the appeal of The World according to Garp lies in the voice and personality of the book's narrator.

The chilly aesthetic debate about the role of the artist to enlarge human understanding catches fire anew in two recent bestsellers: Daniel Martin by John Fowles and … The World According to Garp by John Irving. A latent similarily exists in the viewpoints of both writers, who, at the same time, represent very different worlds. From the generous perspective of the comic vision, they achieve a deep level of human insight by focusing on a large region of experience which we all recognize. Irving and Fo...

In the following review, Horowitz discusses the critical and popular reaction to The World according to Garp.

Garp is harder to take, and more exhilarating, than one has any right to expect…. [In] The World According to Garp life is, more than anything else, intense … sharp-edged, and dangerous: the book is about the worst fears of its characters coming true….

"The World According to Garp" shows that John Irving is haunted by the high level of quotidian American violence and the vulnerability of American lives. He can't get the frequency of assassination as a method of settling our domestic political and social quarrels out of his mind; and he is tormentedly aware of something like a war on women going on in our society as women's struggle for real equality continues and intensifies. He has not, however, arrived at wisdom on any of the...

The World According to Garp was, of course, 1978's Ragtime, which is to say that it is the most recent manifestation of the greatest-novel-of-the-decade. (p. 50) Mr. Irving's previous novels were much shorter than the Garp book, and they hadn't attracted a great deal of attention. True, the man was "one of the most imaginative writers of his generation" (Dutton), but then so was everybody else. Clearly it was going to take more than mere imagination to turn Mr. Irving into...

[The World According to Garp] begins with the infant son of the dead tail-gunner being tossed into the sky; it ends with the grown Garp dying in the sky, in an ambulance helicopter, and then there's a repeat of the opening infant shot. This is one of several attempts by Hill and his colleague Tesich to evolve patterns from the novel and to underscore ones that already exist in the book. Examples: Garp's college girl friend, Helen, sees another girl practicing fellatio on him; later, years afte...

The World According to Garp is a book of dimensions. It is entertainment on a grand, anyway stylish, scale. It is bravado transfigured into bravery—or maybe the other way around. In fact, I think quite often the other way around—which is not to damn, but to wonder. (p. 77) Murder is a frequent occurrence in Garp (both Garp and his mother die in this fashion), but it isn't about murder really, it's about how to breathe life into life. Mayhem and mutilation are on every other page,...

[With his film version of The World According to Garp, director George Roy Hill] hasn't created a movie as potent as the original literary myth—that is, he hasn't done what Milos Forman did with One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. But he hasn't trashed the novel, either, as Forman did Ragtime. Indeed, he's retained enough of the book's vitality and humor to make this film far more enjoyable than most other prestige literary adaptations, including [John Fowles&#x...

People are dying almost from the first page [of The World According to Garp] but by the end the reader is neither bored with death nor hardened to it. Instead, an awful, beautiful aura of appropriateness settles over the novel. It's a strange, Moby Dick-like sense of completeness. One accepts what happens to Irving's characters, even though what happens may make one squirm, protest, or feel real grief. One accepts it because one has come to accept Irving's characters: as people, as frie...

As any reader of John Irving's popular novel knows, a lot happens in "The World According to Garp"—assassinations, attempted assassinations, grotesque mutilations, grotesque self-mutilations, a dog biting a man, a man biting a dog, rape, marital infidelity…. A high percentage of these bizarre events has been preserved in George Roy Hill's ambitious attempt to bring "Garp" to the screen, but what the movie cannot do is supply the glue that binds them to...

It must have been with a pretty desperate laugh that Irving thought up the plot for his richly nasty book [The World According to Garp]. Jenny Fields, a frigid American nurse, desires a child but no involvement with a man. She chooses Sergeant Garp, a ball-turret gunner shot down over France, capable only of muttering his name and squirting his aimless seed. His last shot is Nurse Fields's first—and last, too. 'She … felt Garp shoot up inside her generously as a hose in summer.&#...

In the following review, Stevens offers a positive assessment of The World according to Garp, commenting that the novel is an imaginative and “richly comic” satire.

The most interesting book I've read in the last few months is John Irving's The World According to Garp…. Garp is both a family saga and the history of a marriage, and there's more than a little of Catch-22 at its heart; Irving's sense of humor is as wild and brutal as Joseph Heller's, and Garp's opening scenes, which involve the mating of an antisexual young nurse and a catatonic tail gunner, seem like an explicit wink at both Heller and his doomed Everyman,...