Assassination of Jenny Fields

The Assassination of Jenny Fields is the killing of Jenny Fields at a public gathering, where she is shot while addressing the assembled crowd. The event ends her life without warning, leaves her family to receive the news from abroad, and joins the intimate fact of her death to the confusion and spectacle of a televised public scene.

Background and Setting

At the time of the assassination, Garp, Helen, Duncan, and baby Jenny are in Vienna. They sit in a pension about to watch a news report of the murder. Their old landlady serves coffee and little cakes; Duncan is the only one who eats. The ordinary details of the room frame an event that the family cannot prevent and is about to encounter only through television.

Jenny is speaking to people gathered in a parking lot. She stands at the back of a pickup truck, with Roberta Muldoon helping her onto the tailgate and adjusting the microphone. The scene makes the contrast between public address and private vulnerability visible: Jenny’s white uniform stands out, while she appears small beside Roberta.

The Shooting

Jenny introduces herself to the crowd, whose reactions include cheers, whistles, hoots, and horns from pickup trucks circling the parking lot. Police tell the trucks to move on, but they repeatedly leave and return. As Jenny speaks, a single gunshot cuts across the noisy gathering. No one sees where it comes from, and the account does not identify the shooter at the moment of the shot.

Roberta catches Jenny before she falls. In the broadcast, Roberta carries her down from the tailgate and through the crowd toward a police car. A police officer helps Roberta into the car with Jenny, and the vehicle speeds away. The account later confirms that Jenny never hits the ground and does not speak after being shot; Roberta is certain she never knew what had happened.

The Broadcast and the Shooter

The television report does not present a clear, uninterrupted account. Its camera is diverted by what appears to be a shoot-out among the circling pickup trucks and several police cars. Later images show a man in a hunting coat lying dead, followed by a close-up of what the newsmen identify only as a deer rifle. The report notes that deer season has not officially opened, adding a detail that complicates the apparent setting of the weapon without resolving who fired it or why.

Roberta tells Garp that a man who hated women shot Jenny with a deer rifle. She says the man was a hunter and explains that, because hunting season was near, people had not thought anything was wrong with a man carrying a rifle. Her account names a motive and identifies the weapon, while the broadcast leaves the point of origin of the shot unseen. When Garp asks whether the man was caught, Roberta says that someone shot him, or that he shot himself; the account does not settle which happened.

Garp Learns of the Death

Roberta calls Garp because she does not want him to learn of the killing from the news or newspapers. Garp initially asks who won the New Hampshire governor’s race, lightly, though he knows the call is not really about the election. Roberta then tells him that his mother has been shot and killed. His questions—who did it, whether Jenny is dead, and whether the man was caught—register the rapid movement from guarded conversation to the fact of the loss.

The assassination reaches Garp in two forms: the family watches the televised scene in Vienna, while Roberta gives him a personal account by telephone. The broadcast supplies images but not certainty about the shot or the shooter’s fate; Roberta supplies the decisive news and the assurance that Jenny did not suffer awareness of what happened. The scene’s closing description calls the telecast an X-rated soap opera, an ironic judgment on how public confusion and sensational coverage surround a death that, for Garp and his family, is irreducibly personal.