Bonkers mauls Garp

Bonkers mauls five-year-old T. S. Garp during a children’s game on the Percy lawn, leaving lasting damage to Garp’s left ear. The attack makes the Percy family’s permissive treatment of its dog a direct conflict with Jenny Fields’s insistence on public safety, and begins what Garp calls the Percy War.

Background and Warning Signs

Bonkers belongs to Midge Percy and has long been allowed to roam despite the town leash law. Jenny watches the dog among children running across Steering’s campus and regards its freedom as part of the Percys’ broader disregard for rules that apply to others. Her judgment is sharpened by an earlier incident: while children were playing, Bonkers mangled a volleyball and then bit the boy who tried to retrieve it. The bite left deep puncture wounds in his forearm. Midge described the dog as excited by play, but the injury made clear to the nurse who treated the boy that it could not simply be dismissed as harmless exuberance.

Midge explains that she named the dog after the word for being a little crazy. She had got him after the birth of her fourth child, she says, because she had felt bonkers about her husband, Stewart Percy. The affectionate account of the name contrasts with the growing evidence that the dog’s behavior can injure children. The earlier bite therefore foreshadows the more serious attack on Garp, while Jenny’s objection to Bonkers’s roaming has already taken on a social dimension: she sees the Percys’ freedom for their dog as an expression of upper-class privilege.

The Attack

During a touch-football game on the Percy lawn, Bonkers—described as weighing 170 pounds—hurls himself onto five-year-old Garp’s back and bites off his left earlobe, damaging the rest of the ear as well. The other children scatter. The narration presents the attack not as a calculated act but as the consequence of a powerful, poorly controlled animal being allowed among children; Bonkers’s lack of concentration is also noted as the reason he does not take more of Garp’s ear.

Garp reaches the Percy house with the injured side of his head bloody and chewed, but the adults do not immediately notice him standing in the doorway. Midge is preparing to go outside, while Stewart, who has picked up a squash racket as if to take charge, asks who the dog got this time. Once he learns that the child is Garp, Stewart muses that at least Bonkers has good taste. His casual response, set against Garp’s need for care, makes the disagreement about the dog more than a dispute over an accident: it exposes the gulf between the family that owns Bonkers and the child harmed by him.

Treatment and the Percy War

Garp’s mother, Jenny Fields, treats the injury at the infirmary, where Dr. Pell sews his ear and Jenny reminds him that Garp has recently received a tetanus shot. While she carefully washes around what remains of the ear, she asks Midge Percy to bring Bonkers to the infirmary. Midge asks whether Jenny means an injection to stop him biting; Jenny clarifies that she means an injection that would kill him, sparing the Percys the expense of taking him to a veterinarian. Her proposal makes the dispute’s stakes explicit: for Jenny, preventing another attack matters more than preserving the family’s dangerous pet.

Stewart Percy rejects the idea in a memo written on the stationery of the Secretary of the Steering School. Jenny answers by telephone that she wants Bonkers put to sleep, or at least tied up permanently. The conflict thus expands from the injury itself into a confrontation over who must bear the consequences of the dog’s freedom. Garp later names it the Percy War: he understands his mother’s position as a class conflict, while his own immediate lesson is to beware of Bonkers and the rest of the Percys. The episode gives the family quarrel both a public-safety dimension and a continuing personal charge.

Lasting Effects and Narrative Significance

The attack leaves Garp with an oddly shaped, permanently altered ear, and he must wear his hair long to cover it. He complains about that style, so the injury remains part of his ordinary life rather than ending with the treatment at the infirmary. The practical consequence carries the episode forward: Bonkers’s attack changes Garp’s appearance and leaves him with a visible reminder of the encounter.

The incident also enters Garp’s later writing and memory. He recalls that, at the moment of the attack, he thought the word “Jap” meant his ear was gone; after the attack, he asks Jenny what Stewart meant by saying Bonkers had good taste. That remark’s joking tone acquires a different weight when repeated by the injured child seeking its meaning. Together, these recollections preserve the gap between the adults’ casual language and the child’s experience, while the lasting ear injury makes the Percy War more than a quarrel that can be dismissed once the immediate danger passes.

Lasting Effects and Narrative Significance

The attack leaves Garp with an oddly shaped, permanently altered ear, and he must wear his hair long to cover it. He complains about that style, so the injury remains part of his ordinary life rather than ending with treatment at the infirmary. This practical consequence carries the episode forward: Bonkers’s attack changes Garp’s appearance and leaves him with a lasting reminder of the encounter.

The incident also enters Garp’s later writing and memory. He recalls that, at the moment of the attack, he thought the word “Jap” meant his ear was gone; afterward, he asks Jenny what Stewart meant by saying Bonkers had good taste. The remark’s joking tone takes on a different weight when repeated by the injured child seeking its meaning. Together, these recollections preserve the distance between the adults’ casual language and the child’s experience, while the lasting ear injury makes the Percy War more than a quarrel that ends with the immediate danger.