How our Relationships and Bonds Shape Us

The life of a struggling, conflicted writer is one that has been used countless times before; a cliché that we cannot escape. These striving writers are always very deep thinkers, rather scraggly people, who are unorganized due to the clutters and masses of ideas and thoughts contained in their mind. This exact character is portrayed in The World According to Garp, so why was I not so immediately repelled by this book, since I despise clichés and simply cannot stand them? I have concluded that it is the plotline of The World According to Garp that I find so intriguing, and the development of the characters found in this book. Yet when looking further, I realize that the story is just one of a struggling marriage, and how having a feminist mother and the nonexistence of a father shapes a young man's life.

The absence of a father is something I expect to take a large toll on a young man's life; meaning that later in life he will not be capable of playing the role of a father later in life, when he has children.  I expected much the same of Garp whilst reading my book, yet he seems fully capable of loving his kids to the very fullest; making them dinner every night, picking them up from their schools and clubs, worrying about their illnesses and their friends with less than reliable mothers. Garp seems like the perfect father, so how on earth could the nonexistence of one parent not have affected him? I searched the text for evidence of Garp acting as an invalid or fraudulent father, or showcase any actions that may have been better or different had he had a substantial father. But I then found myself stuck with that last thought; how would Garp have acted differently had he had a father? Would he be more levelheaded since he would have had a second parent to act as a counterpart or opposite to his mother's craziness and extreme view of men?

How would our lives be shaped differently had we not met just one single person who has influenced our life in ways that we may not realize. I try and picture my life with an absent father, a predicament such as Garp finds himself in, and I find that I would have been a very different person, one who would have more aspects of my mother's personality, and who would have had a very different sense of humor, if any at all. In the long run, I would not like the person I would be had I not had a father, or more specifically, my father. I believe it is much this way with many of the relationships I hold; had I not had those relationships and the experiences I've had and accumulated over the years, I would be an entirely different person. Which is why it is my belief that we all should value the relationships we have  even if they are awful and have no benefits, for they all teach us something and have something to offer.