Boston Mercy Summary

The World According to Garp is John Irving's novel of T.S. Garp, an author born to a pioneering feminist, and his struggle to build a satisfactory life among tragic and quirky events. This dark comedy addresses the topics of feminism, lust, death, and creativity as played out on the backdrop of the mid-twentieth century.

The story begins in 1942 with the introduction of Jenny Fields, a nursing student in Boston, who wounds a lecherous man in a movie theatre by slicing his arm with a scalpel she keeps in her purse. Outraged by the insinuations from the police that the situation is a result of a love affair gone bad, Jenny analyzes her life and the lives of all women and concludes that each woman is either on her way to becoming a whore or a wife. Jenny balks at the...