What's the Difference between The World According to Garp the Book and The World According to Garp the Movie?
The World According to Garp Book vs Movie
| In the Book |
In the Movie |
|
He doesn't say this. |
As a boy, Garp refers to the "Long Ranger" instead of the "Lone Ranger". |
|
Jenny tells Garp that his father was a Ball Turret Gunner. |
He was a Tail Gunner.
|
|
This doesn't happen. |
Garp is obsessed with Planes and his dead father. |
|
Jenny decides that Garp should take up wrestling. |
Garp decides for himself because he thinks the helmets the wrestler's wear look like the helmet he imagined his father wore.
|
|
After Garp, in drag, is chased out of his mother's funeral he jumps in a cab and the driver says many disparaging things about women. Garp becomes angered and tells the cabbie he is an asshole and a moron. Garp threatens to call a cop and accuse him of assault if the cabbie doesn't shut up. |
This doesn't happen. |
|
Helen gives Garp constructive criticism of his early writting. |
She gushes about how great it is.
|
|
Helen doesn't attend Garp's wresting matches. |
She does. |
|
Jenny is assulted by a soldier at a movie theater and defends herself by slashing him. |
This doesn't happen.
|
|
There are many references to death, and rape. |
It is a happier tone without such dark material. |
|
Garp and his mother move to Vienna to write. |
Garp and his mother move to New York.
|
|
Garp and Helen swing/have a mutual long-term affair with another couple. The woman has a speech impediment that foreshadows Garp's wired jaw after the accident that kills Walt. |
The couple and the affair are absent. |
|
Garp and Ellen James become friends. Ellen James lives with Garp and Helen for a short while. |
Garp and Ellen James meet very briefly during the commotion at his mother's memorial service. She whisks him away before he can really talk to her after identifying herself.
|
|
Garp discovers a 10 year old girl who has been raped while jogging in the park. |
This doesn't happen. |
|
This doesn't occur. |
Several young males tell the joke, "Why can't basketball players become Fathers? Because they dribble when they shoot."
|
|
When Garp finally starts to write again, his novel is called, The World According to Bensenhaver. |
He writes a story called "Ellen" about Ellen James. |
|
The final line "All life is terminal" suggests that Garp dies in the end. |
It is left open ended and suggests that Garp might live on.
|