Bonkers attacks Garp

Bonkers’s attack on five-year-old T. S. Garp becomes more than a dangerous encounter with a family pet: it exposes the Percys’ assumption that their dog may roam freely, even when others bear the risk. Jenny Fields sees the dispute that follows as a class conflict, while Garp remembers its simpler lesson—he must watch out for Bonkers and for the Percys.

Background

The Percy family dog lived amid the children playing on the Steering campus and around the family’s grounds. Jenny had already objected to the dog running loose in defiance of the town leash law, connecting the Percy family’s casual disregard for the rule to their privileged position. Bonkers had once been a puppy that knocked over garbage cans and took baseballs; as he grew, Jenny came to regard him as mean.

The danger was not entirely new. On an earlier occasion, Bonkers damaged a volleyball and bit the boy who tried to take it from him. The bite left deep puncture wounds, and a nurse rejected the family’s explanation that the dog had merely become excited while playing with the children. Midge Percy had named the Newfoundland Bonkers after describing herself as “bonkers” about her husband, Stewart Percy. The name’s affectionate origin sat uneasily beside the growing evidence that the dog could hurt people.

The attack

During a touch-football game on the Percy lawn, Bonkers charged into the five-year-old Garp and bit his ear. The other children scattered. Garp, bloodied and injured, later made his way to the Percy house, where he stood in the doorway as the adults learned that Bonkers had bitten him. Midge prepared to take him to the infirmary, and Stewart Percy’s first response was to direct that he be brought there rather than summon Garp’s mother.

Stewart then examined Garp and focused on the boy’s brown eyes, not the injury. He decided that Garp’s father must have been Japanese, drawing on his own experience in the Pacific. The speculation about Garp’s unknown father thus intruded into the immediate aftermath of the attack, while Garp, too young to understand Stewart’s meaning, misinterpreted the word “Jap” as referring to his damaged ear.

The Percy War and Its Consequences

At the infirmary, Jenny Fields carefully cleaned the area around what remained of Garp’s ear. She then proposed that Midge bring Bonkers to her, explaining that she meant to give the dog an injection that would kill him, not make him less likely to bite. Her response treated the earlier bite and the attack on Garp as evidence that the danger could not be dismissed as innocent play. It also turned the question from how to treat Garp’s injury into whether Bonkers should be allowed to remain at large.

Stewart Percy objected in a memo written on stationery identifying him as Secretary of the Steering School. Jenny answered his protest by phone, insisting that the dog be put down or, at minimum, tied up permanently. Stewart maintained that there was no point in having a dog if it could not run free. Their disagreement made the practical dispute over Bonkers a conflict over who was entitled to freedom and who had to bear its consequences.

Garp later named the conflict the Percy War. He understood his mother’s position as a class war, consistent with her later view that all wars were class wars; his own immediate conclusion was less political and more personal: he needed to watch out for Bonkers and for the Percys. The episode thus establishes both the danger posed by the family’s roaming dog and the broader antagonism between Jenny and the Percys, while preserving the difference between her structural interpretation and her son’s childhood caution.

Significance

The episode’s importance lies in the unequal meanings attached to the same act of freedom. Stewart Percy treats Bonkers’s ability to roam as essential to owning a dog; Jenny sees that liberty as a privilege protected by the Percys, whose animal can endanger other children without the family accepting responsibility. Garp’s injury makes that conflict concrete, but his later account keeps his mother’s political interpretation distinct from his own childhood response: she sees class struggle, while he learns to beware of the dog and its owners.

Aftermath and Meaning

At the infirmary, Jenny Fields carefully cleaned the area around what remained of T. S. Garp’s ear. She then told Midge Percy to bring Bonkers to her, clarifying that the injection she proposed would kill the dog rather than prevent him from biting. The earlier attack on a boy and now the attack on Garp had made the risk impossible to dismiss as harmless play. Jenny’s proposal shifted the question from treating the child’s injury to whether Bonkers should be allowed to remain loose.

Stewart Percy protested in a memo on stationery bearing his title as Secretary of the Steering School. Jenny answered by telephone, demanding that Bonkers be put down or, at least, tied up permanently. Stewart insisted that a dog had no purpose if it could not run free. Their dispute made the practical question of controlling a dangerous animal a contest over whose freedom counted—and who would bear its cost.

Garp later called this conflict the Percy War. He understood his mother’s response as a class war, consistent with her later claim that all wars were class wars. His own immediate lesson was narrower: he had to watch out for Bonkers and for the Percys. The episode holds those perspectives apart: Jenny interprets the attack through privilege and unequal responsibility, while her son remembers a personal warning. The dog’s freedom, defended by Stewart as a principle of ownership, had already come at the expense of children who did not control it.