The World According to Garp by John Irving

Jenny Fields is one of the main characters from John Irving’s novel The World According to Garp. John Voss is a main character from Richard Russo’s novel Empire Falls. Although these two characters are from two completely separate novels, written by different authors, they share many similarities and differences.

A trait that Jenny Fields and John Voss share is that they both don’t really belong with the people around them. They don’t have the necessary social skills that most people have learned throughout their lives. They also don’t know what is considered socially appropriate. For example, Jenny Fields from The World According to Garp, wanted a baby more than anything else. So one day, while she was working as a nurse at the hospital, she raped a helpless wounded soldier, T.S. Garp, so that she could become impregnated without being tied down to the baby’s father. ”She had no doubt the magic had worked. She felt more receptive than prepared soil-the nourished earth-and she had felt Garp shot up inside her as generously as a hose in summer.” (Irving 22) This shows how little she knows, or cares, about what is socially appropriate. Because she wanted a baby so much, she didn’t care that she had to rape a dying patient in order to get what she wanted the way she wanted it. John Voss was also very uneducated on how to be social. One can see his selfishness really come out at the end of the novel, Empire Falls. John came into the classroom and reached into his grocery bag and pulled out a gun. “He points it and pulls the trigger without hesitation” (Russo 447). John had been tormented by so many people for so long that he just snapped and came to school with a gun in order to end the tormenting. When Tick Roby faces John Voss duri...

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such as the personality traits of not fitting in with their peers and the people around them, and the fact that they are antisocial and they show little, if any emotions. Also, they both did whatever they felt was necessary to do in order to get what it was that they wanted. Despite their similarities, they are also very different. John Voss came from a damaged home, whereas Jenny Fields came from a well-off and wealthy family. Another difference between the two is the fact that John Voss killed people, and Jenny did not. John Voss lived on his own and had to fend for himself, where Jenny was provided with the things she needed. These two characters have many similarities and differences.

Work Cited

Russo, Richard. Empire Falls. New York: Vintage, 2001. Print.

Irving, John. The World According to Garp. New York: Ballantine Books, 2009. Print.