The World According to Garp recap

Nurse Jenny Fields deliberately becomes a single mother by conceiving a child with a dying, brain-damaged airman. Her son, T. S. Garp, grows up at the Steering School, becomes a writer, and marries Helen Holm. Jenny's memoir makes her an unwilling feminist icon, while Garp's fiction and domestic life are shaped by sexual jealousy and fear for his children. Both spouses have affairs. Garp drives into the parked car where Helen is with her student Michael Milton; the collision kills their young son Walt, costs Duncan an eye, and maims Michael. Garp and Helen reconcile and have a daughter. Garp's subsequent novel succeeds, but Jenny is assassinated by an anti-feminist attacker. After surviving violence at her memorial, Garp returns to the Steering School as a wrestling coach. Bainbridge Percy, known as Pooh, carries an old grievance against him, shoots him there, and he dies. Helen and the children survive him, as do his books, Jenny's contested public legacy, and the friendships formed around their unconventional family.

During the Second World War, nurse Jenny Fields decides that she wants a child without a husband. She conceives one with Technical Sergeant Garp, a dying airman whose brain injury has left him almost unable to communicate, and names the boy T. S. Garp. Jenny takes a job at the Steering School in New England, where housing for the infirmary nurse lets her raise her son independently. Garp grows up among the schoolboys and staff, experiencing Jenny as a capable, unconventional parent rather than the scandal imagined by her family and society. He begins wrestling under coach Ernie Holm and becomes interested in Ernie's daughter Helen. The fatherless boy's encounters with injury, dogs, sex, and school life feed a powerful imagination. Jenny's refusal to follow expected roles gives him freedom, but it also makes both mother and son objects of other people's curiosity and judgment.

Garp falls in love with Helen Holm, who plans an academic career and says she will marry a writer. He begins treating fiction as his vocation. He and Jenny travel to Vienna, where Jenny works as a nurse and writes an account of her life while Garp struggles to turn observation into stories. His fiction starts to take form, including the tale of the Pension Grillparzer. Jenny's plain account of rejecting conventional sexual and marital expectations becomes a publishing success and attracts women who see her as a guide, though she did not set out to lead a movement. Garp returns with enough evidence of his seriousness for Helen to accept him. They marry and try to build a household around her teaching and his writing. Their partnership is affectionate but already shaped by different attitudes toward work, sex, privacy, and the public meaning imposed on Jenny's choices.

Jenny uses the proceeds and attention from her memoir to shelter women at her coastal home. Her circle includes Roberta Muldoon, a transgender former football player who becomes a trusted family friend. Garp distrusts some of the movement's absolutism and resents being treated mainly as Jenny Fields's son, yet remains close to his mother. He and Helen have two boys, Duncan and Walt. Garp writes, manages much of the child care, and becomes increasingly vigilant about threats to the children. The marriage is loving but not sexually exclusive in practice: Garp pursues affairs while remaining jealous of Helen's independence. His stories convert domestic fear, lust, and observed disaster into fiction, sometimes disturbing the people who recognize material drawn from life. The family appears stable, but secrecy and Garp's urge to control danger are creating the conditions for a more serious rupture.

Helen begins an affair with Michael Milton, one of her students. Garp discovers enough to suspect them and drives home at night while Michael and Helen are in a parked car. The collision is catastrophic: young Walt is killed, Duncan loses an eye, Garp is badly injured, and Michael is permanently maimed. Helen survives, and she and Garp choose to rebuild their marriage rather than separate. Their shared guilt and grief end the pattern of casual betrayals but cannot restore their son. During the long aftermath, Garp writes darker work shaped by sexual violence and arbitrary loss. The public campaign around Ellen James, a girl whose attackers cut out her tongue, also enters his world. Women who remove their own tongues in supposed solidarity call themselves Ellen Jamesians, but Ellen herself rejects their appropriation. Garp's hostility toward the group adds to his reputation for opposing parts of the movement associated with Jenny.

Garp and Helen have a daughter, whom they name Jenny, and continue reconstructing family life with Duncan. Garp's violent new novel finds a large audience with help from editor John Wolf, bringing him the success he had wanted but also greater exposure and controversy. Jenny Fields remains a public symbol whose followers and enemies often ignore the private person her family knows. While appearing at a political event, she is shot and killed by a man enraged by what she represents. Her death leaves Garp grieving and forces him to confront the organized movement that claims her legacy. A women-only memorial is planned at Jenny's coastal home, and Garp wants to attend despite his sex and his hostility toward the Ellen Jamesians. Disguising himself offers a way inside, but it also places him among people who may recognize him as an enemy rather than as Jenny's son.

Garp enters Jenny's memorial disguised as a woman. He is recognized and attacked amid the anger surrounding his mother and the Ellen Jamesians, and Roberta helps him escape. Ellen James herself rejects the people acting in her name and becomes close to the family, restoring an individual human relationship where public arguments had created symbols. Garp and Helen return to the Steering School. He coaches wrestling, writes, and lives with Helen, Duncan, and young Jenny, having survived the affairs and the crash that killed Walt. Bainbridge Percy, known as Pooh, has preserved an obsessive grievance against Garp connected to her family and sister Cushie. She finds him at the school and shoots him. Garp dies of his wounds despite being carried to the infirmary where his life began. Helen and the children continue without him, as do Roberta, Ellen, and the readers who know Garp or Jenny chiefly through books and public legends. The writer who constantly imagined dangers to his family is ultimately killed by a threat he could not anticipate or control.

After Jenny Fields is murdered by a man hostile to her public feminism, Garp's connection to her legacy draws him deeper into conflicts he distrusts. He attends her women-only memorial disguised in women's clothing, is recognized, and is attacked before Roberta helps him escape. Ellen James, whose cause has been appropriated by activists who mutilate themselves in her name, becomes a real friend to the Garp family. Garp and Helen return to the Steering School, where he coaches wrestling and continues writing. Their marriage has survived infidelity and the crash that killed Walt, injured Duncan, and permanently maimed Michael Milton, but danger has not ended. Bainbridge Percy, known as Pooh, approaches Garp at the school and shoots him because of her obsessive grievance against him. He dies from the wounds, leaving Helen, Duncan, and his young daughter Jenny behind. His books and the often distorted public stories about him persist, while the people closest to him continue their lives beyond the roles his anxious imagination assigned them. The ending confirms the pattern Garp feared throughout his life: violence is unpredictable, and love cannot guarantee protection from it.