The World According to Garp is a sprawling, episodic novel, with the colorful, sometimes roguish, but endearing illegitimate son of Jenny Fields as its hero. It is also a Bildungsroman, a novel about the formation of a writer, Irving’s portrait of the artist. Its episodes point toward attempts to triumph over the “Under Toad” of death and obscurity. Garp at first seeks to accomplish this through his fiction but comes to the conclusion that writing an immortal novel is not the only way to find meaning in life. In this, Garp adapts Aurelian stoicism to his own needs, recognizing the necessity of rising above one’s own pain to live in closer harmony with nature. Jenny knows this instinctively; her son learns it through bitter experience.

The Pension Grillparzer obliquely introduces the “Under Toad” theme through Duna, the trained bear which eventually becomes clawless, toothless, and unwanted. Vienna, the place of Aurelius’s death, is a city without hope or the possibility of regaining its former eminence. It is a city of the old, the corrupt, and it mirrors Garp’s own early life.

Gender Roles Irving's novel examines the significance of gender roles in American society. Jenny's independence as a woman is frowned-upon by both her family and society in general. Young women usually didn't live alone in the 1940s. For example, it is immediately assumed that Jenny has some relationship to the soldier she stabs in the movie theater. Jenny resents the idea that a woman has to be "either somebody's wife or somebody's whore." In fact, Jenny exhibits some traditionally masculine traits: she is strong, plainspoken, and willful. This is demonstrated when her lack of a husband doesn't prevent her from getting pregnant. Her refusal to allow society to pigeonhole her because of her gender stirs great controversy and ultimately leads to her assassination. Alternately, Jenny's son Garp reverses gender roles. Garp, although he is very masculine, assumes the traditionally female role of domestic caretaker. Helen works while Garp cleans, cooks, and cares for the children. Although the arrangement is simply a matter of convenience (Garp can also write as he performs the domestic chores), the role of "househusband" was unusual at the time. Finally, the character of Roberta Muldoon demonstrates the most drastic gender reversal in the novel. The former football player is obviously happy to be a female.

Death and Disfigurement Irving's novel ends with the words, "in the world according to Garp, we are all terminal cases." Irving seems almost obsessed with the absurdity and randomness of violence and death. The author often details the deaths of his characters in The World According to Garp almost immediately after introducing them. Garp himself is conceived amongst dying and disfigured men in the intensive care unit of Boston Mercy. He is disfigured as a child when Bonkers the dog bites off part of his ear. Garp is disgusted by the self-mutilation of the Ellen Jamesians; he is more sympathetic to the gender-changing mutilation performed on Roberta Muldoon by doctors. His family is traumatized by the car accident that kills Walt. Duncan loses one of his eyes in the accident, and Michael Milton is horribly injured. Late in the novel, the concept of the Under Toad is introduced. The Under Toad, a play on the word "undertow," is the code word the Garps use for a powerful feeling of dread. Garp "smells" the Under Toad when he receives the phone call in Austria informing him of Jenny's assassination. Garp himself is assassinated near the end of the novel. Finally, the epilogue details the various deaths of...