John Irving's notoriety as a novelist rests at least partially upon his admirable ability to fuse the comic and tragic in fiction, often within the same “sketch†or scene. His persistent vision of the absurd and sublime as conjoined twins alludes to a more profound and probing set of themes in his published fiction.In his novel, “The World According to Garp†the apparent domesticity of the story's characters and settings prove little protection against the forces of fate or circumstance which collide repeatedly with the domestic surface of the novel, many times in irruptions of violence, with much of that violence seeming to be random or bizarre. The function and role of violence in “The World According to Garp†is manifold; however, one of the primary functions of Irving's continuous depiction of violence is to portray the chaos and random dangers of the universe.
