As the primary protagonist (who is also a novelist), Garp occupies a predictable kind of self-conscious liminality. At times, he comments on how removed he is from everything around him, more of a witness than a participant.

Garp is plagued by anxiety. Parenthood exacerbates his tendencies toward imagining monsters everywhere, and he becomes all too aware of the dangers that can befall children. Imaginative, guilty, and overwrought with emotion, Garp worries that he cannot protect his children from everything, and he actually enables his children’s downfall through his conviction that in resuming his preferred course of action, he can keep them safe from corruption.

Garp is not sure how to treat people who identify as women. Even though Garp frequently remarks that Roberta is his best friend, he misgenders her sometimes, and even does so cruelly in a few cases. He dislikes being known as the son of a prominent feminist since he feels that this casts him (and anything he writes) in Jenny’s shadow. Garp is not so much proud of Jenny as he is accepting of her; he does not seek to proselytize on her behalf in the same way that many of her followers do.