The role and function of violence in the novel `The World According to Garp`

John Irvings notoriety as a novelist rests at least partially upon his admirable ability to fuse the comic and tragic in fiction, often in spite of appearance the same sketch or scene. His persistent vision of the infatuated and sublime as conjoined correspond alludes to a more(prenominal) profound and probing set of themes in his published fiction.In his novel, The terra firma consort to Garp the obvious domesticity of the storys characters and settings prove little protection against the forces of fate or circumstance which collide repeatedly with the domestic go on of the novel, many times in irruptions of force-out, with much of that military force seeming to be random or bizarre. The accountability and role of violence in The World tally to Garp is manifold however, one of the primary functions of Irvings continuous depicting of violence is to portray the chaos and random dangers of the universe.The point of violence in The World According to Garp is not only to i nstruct readers about possible sociological and ethical breeches in contemporary society, besides to remind readers of the primal, seemingly random violence which fills the universe itself. One way of depicting violence in the novel is to show a darkly comic, virtually slapstick vision of violence, as in the ill-famed Michael Milton castration scene where one of the novels darkest and most tragic moments is simultaneously offset by the humor of the slip his penis being bitten off in a car while engaging in an two-timing(a) affair.There is simultaneously a notion of poetic justice in this scene, but also of devastating almost unimaginable tragedy which shatters the surface of the domestic scene. This juxtapositioning of violence with comic-tragic experience is continuous by means ofout the novel. The existence of bizarre violence and the associated vein of black humor, even in the first section of the book, contributes to irony. The novel opens to the backdrop of a war, and Jen ny Fieldss brusque categorizing of the wounded The Role and Function of Violence in The World According to Garp rascal -2-into classes of Externals, Vital Organs, Absentees, and Goners certainly contains an element of the blackly humorous. (Wilson, 1992, p. 55) In one way or another, each of the characters in The World According to Garp is seen to be either a victim of violence, usually chaotic violence, living in the wash of their experience, or as a victim (unknowingly) headed for a violent encounter, or both. The sense of violence as ubiquitous, but ultimately unpredictable and unaccountable, reinforces the cosmic or universal scope of the primal element of violence discussed previously.This primal ineffable power, the power of random violent tragedy is symbolized by Walts mis-hearing of the word undertow which he mistakenly calls Under Toad. The Under Toad becomes a near-archetypal vision of cosmic disorder and brutality. Walts malapropism becomes a catchphrase that the Gar p family uses to refer to imminent danger, violence, and death. The randomness and suddenness of death ar brought to our attention at the really beginning of the novel when Garps father, the ball-turret gunner, becomes a Goner. Although violence and death abound in Irving first novel, Setting disembarrass the Bears, in Garp at that place is one disaster after another. (Campbell, 1998, p. 81) The universal presence of violence and disorder becomes associated, through its immersion into the every day settings and characters, with a primitive, natural force, something which impacts humanity and flows through them but issues, perhaps, from a more cosmically primitive level. One way the natural primitivism of violence is expressed in The World According to Garp is through the association of violence with sex.Whatever the The Role and Function of Violence in The World According to Garp page -3-connection, sex and violence are related throughout the novel, and Garp finds himself confr onting them at nearly every turn. (Campbell, 1998, p. 83) This association allows Irving to demonstrate that primal, chaotic violence exists as an intrinsic part of the universal paradigm and finds oblique, often absurd and even humorous expression through human events. In this way, violence, like death and kin, love and sex, is viewed as an endemic force of nature.As a symbol for Irvings cosmic paradigm, the wrestling room at Steering college offers a complex and complete statement, symbolically, for Irvings cosmic vision. Here, in a place created for violent confrontation, all of the major events of a life, Garps life, emanate. It is not only where Garp learns how to wrestle and feels at home, but also where he proposes to Helen Holm. It is, further, the space that Pooh Percy enters, in a nurses uniform (like his mothers), and kills Garp. (Campbell, 1998, p.75)The wrestling room becomes a microcosm, a stage whereupon the great, often absurd, dramas of a life are enacted, but it is a place of competition, of struggle, and ultimately of death. The cycle which links sex and violence, death and birth, continues in Garps pepper of consciousness even as he lays dying, showing how individuality is subsumed under the larger, cosmic processes. Garp thinks Even if there is only death after death (after death), be grateful for small favors sometimes there is birth after sex, for example.And if you are very fortunate, sometimes there is sex after birth (Irving, 576). Irvings use of violence in The World According to Garp is extensive, varied, and intense. The modes of violence in the novel range from the comic to the harrowingly tragic and often involve two or modes simultaneously. Irvings purpose in depicting violence in this way is to try out violence and chaos as an integral part of the universe inhabited by humanity, whose insular and forgetful visions partake of, but are incapable of fully comprehending the universal forces which shape their lives.