Garp learns (often painfully) from the women in his life (including transsexual ex-football player Roberta Muldoon) struggling to become more tolerant in the face of intolerance. He and his family inevitably experience dark and violent events through which the characters change and grow. Garp becomes a devoted parent, wrestling with anxiety for the safety of his children and a desire to keep them safe from the dangers of the world.

She nurtures and supports women traumatized by men among them the Ellen Jamesians, a group of women who cut off their tongues in support of and named after an eleven-year-old girl whose tongue was cut off by her rapists to silence her. The publication of A Sexual Suspect makes his mother famous as she becomes a feminist icon as feminists view her book as a manifesto of a woman who does not care to bind herself to a man, and who chooses to raise a child on her own. After they return to Steering Garp marries Helen, the wrestling coach's daughter and founds his family, he a struggling writer, she a teacher of English. His mother, too, starts writing, - her autobiography. After his graduation in 1961, his mother takes him to Vienna where he writes his first novella. Garp grows up, becoming interested in sex, wrestling, and writing fiction-three topics in which his mother has little interest. Jenny raises young Garp alone, taking a position at the all-boys school Steering School in New England. S.' (a name derived from 'Technical Sergeant,' but consisting of just initials). Unconstrained by convention and driven by practicality and her desire for a child, Jenny uses Garp's sexual response to impregnate herself, and names the resulting son 'T. As a matter of practicality and kindness in making his passing as comfortable as possible and reducing his agitation, she manually gratifies him several times. Jenny nurses Garp, observing his infantile state and almost perpetual autonomic sexual arousal. She encounters a dying ball turret gunner known only as Technical Sergeant Garp who was severely brain damaged in combat. His mother, Jenny Fields, is a strong-willed nurse who wants a child but not a husband.

The world according to garp author