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| “ | My momma always said... "Life was like a box of chocolates - you never know what you're gonna get." | „ |
| ~ Forrest's most famous quote. |
Forrest Alexander Gump Sr. is the titular main protagonist of the film Forrest Gump, based on the novel of the same name.
He is a kind-hearted man with an intellectual disability whose momentous life includes saving his fellow soldiers during the Vietnam War, launching a successful shrimp company, and running across the country. He is the widowed husband of Jenny Curran and the father of Forrest Gump Jr.
He was portrayed by Tom Hanks as an adult, and by Michael Conner Humphreys as a child.
Biography[]
Childhood[]
Forrest was born near the small town of Greenbow, Alabama. His father was absent during his life, and his mother said he was "on vacation". She named him after a Scots-Irish ancestor, who was a Confederate general in the American Civil War and the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. She intended his name to be a reminder that "sometimes we all do things that, well, just don't make no sense".
Forrest was born with scoliosis, forcing him to wear orthotics, which made walking difficult and running impossible. He also had a relatively low IQ of 75, which nearly prevented him from being accepted into public school; his mother managed to get the principal to reconsider by letting him sleep with her. Despite his physical and mental challenges, Forrest's mother told him not to let anyone tell him he was different, telling him "stupid is as stupid does".
Forrest and his mother lived in a large house just outside of Greenbow. They made money by renting out rooms to travellers. One of their guests was a young Elvis Presley. Forrest liked dancing to Elvis' music and his leg braces gave him a unique dancing style, which would inspire Elvis after picking up his signature moves from watching Forrest dance. One evening after grocery shopping, Forrest and his mother saw this young man appearing on television singing "Hound Dog" while performing Forrest's "hip dancing".
During the bus ride on Forrest's first day of school, none of his peers were nice to him, refusing to offer him a seat, when he met Jenny Curran, who offered him a seat beside her, and instantly fell in love with her. The two became close friends, often playing around a large nearby tree. Forrest described their relationship saying, Jenny was one of the few people except his mother to accept Forrest as he was, helping him learn to read and stand up to bullies who harassed him. However, Jenny's home life was not nearly as happy as Forrest's, as her mother had died when she was five and her father was an alcoholic who molested and beat her, until she was later taken away to live with her grandmother, and Forrest's friendship offered her an escape.
One day, a group of bullies were throwing rocks at Forrest, and one of them cut his forehead. Jenny told Forrest to run, which he did, only to prompt the bullies to chase him on their bikes. As Forrest struggled to run, his leg braces broke apart. Once he was free of them, Forrest was able to run incredibly fast. Forrest would never wear leg braces again, and was able to run anywhere he wanted to after that.
Teens[]
Forrest and Jenny remained close friends all the way through high school, though he remained a target for bullies. One day, while running from some bullies (now in a truck), he interrupted the local high school's football practice by running across the field faster than all the players. This feat caught the attention of Bear Bryant, head coach of Alabama Crimson Tide football, who was at the practice scouting American football players. After his incredible running ability impressed the coach, Forrest received a football scholarship to the University of Alabama, where his speed helped them win several games in college football. He played as a kick returner for five years and wore jersey number 44, which is believed to be a reference to his birth year. He was later named to the College Football All-America Team and got to meet President JFK at the White House. When asked by the president how he felt, Forrest (having drank fifteen bottles of Dr Pepper) gave an honest answer: "I gotta pee."
Forrest was also present at the university when it was desegregated and observed Governor George Wallace's Stand in the Schoolhouse Door, denouncing the desegregation. While several citizens jeered the black students entering the campus, Forrest, not entirely understanding the situation, simply walked up to Vivian Malone and handed her a book she dropped, saying simply "Ma'am? You dropped your book... Ma'am?" before following her and James Hood into school, causing his coaches to watch the incident in disbelief. Forrest later spends time with Jenny in her college dormitory during a rainy day, after she had been abused by another college boy.
Army[]
At his college graduation in 1966, Forrest was approached by an army recruiter who asked if he'd "given any thought to his future". Soon after, Forrest would join the United States Army. On the bus going to boot camp, Forrest met Benjamin Buford Blue, a young black man from Bayou La Batre, Alabama, who went by the nickname "Bubba". Bubba told Forrest about his family history of cooking shrimp and how he had planned to buy his own shrimping boat after getting out of the army. Bubba explains to Forrest that he loves all kinds of shrimp, making a long list of different types, with Forrest being the only one to really listen to him.
Forrest did well in the army as he followed orders well without distraction; for example, he set a new company record for assembling his M14 rifle with his drill sergeant, who regularly singled him out as an example for the other recruits, replying he would be an army general someday. Meanwhile, while Jenny was having multiple relationships with different men, having been kicked out of school for wearing her school sweater to pose in Playboy, she had gotten work singing naked at a strip club in Memphis, Tennessee under the stage name 'Bobbie Dylan'. Forrest goes to visit her at the club, and gets into a fight with some patrons who are harassing her during her performance. During an argument that takes place shortly after, Forrest tells Jenny that he loves her, but Jenny replies that he doesn't know what love is. Jenny is angry, but later becomes concerned when he tells her he was being deployed to Vietnam to serve in the Vietnam War. Jenny tells him not to try being brave if he was ever in trouble and to just run away instead.
While in Vietnam, Forrest and Bubba are assigned to the Old Reliables of the 47th Infantry Regiment, in the Mekong Delta region, where they meet their platoon leader Lieutenant Dan Taylor, whom Forrest would refer to as "Lieutenant Dan". While on patrol, Bubba proposed that he and Forrest go into the shrimping business together after their time in the army was finished, and Forrest agreed. After several uneventful months, their platoon was ambushed by the Viet Cong and several soldiers were wounded and killed. In the confusion, Forrest initially was ordered to retreat, and was separated from the rest of his platoon, but after becoming concerned for Bubba, he ran back to look for him.
Forrest then found Lieutenant Dan and several other wounded soldiers and carried them to safety before continuing to look for Bubba. Forrest finally found Bubba badly wounded and managed to carry him away from the combat area before it was hit with napalm from an airstrike. Sadly, Bubba died of complications from his wounds soon after, with his last words being "I wanna go home." Forrest himself was shot in the buttock during the firefight, giving him a million-dollar wound, allowing him to recover in an army medical centre in Ho Chi Minh City. Lieutenant Dan was in the bed next to his, having lost his legs because of his injuries, and he later became angry at Forrest for cheating him out of his destiny to die in battle with honor (as several of his ancestors had) and rendering him disabled. While recovering in the infirmery, eating ice cream and watching Gomer Pyle USMC on TV, Forrest picks up ping-pong as a hobby.
Washington[]
In Washington, D.C., Forrest later received the Medal of Honor for his bravery in Vietnam. When being awarded, President LBJ asked where he was hit; when Forrest told him, the president whispered in his ear, saying he'd like to see it someday. Forrest promptly lowered his trousers and turned to show him his wound - while on national TV. President Johnson simply smiled and walked away.
Shortly thereafter, Forrest went out sightseeing in Washington, accidentally finding himself among a group of veterans attending the 1967 March on the Pentagon, an anti-war rally led by Abbie Hoffman. While making a speech at the rally that was rudely cut off by a policeman, he was reunited with Jenny, who had since become a hippie. Forrest was less enamored with her new boyfriend Wesley, the president of the SDS at the University of California, Berkeley, and soon beat him up after he saw him hit Jenny during an argument at a Black Panther Party gathering. Forrest and Jenny stayed up all night while Jenny told Forrest of her travels. Before they went their separate ways again in the morning, Forrest gave Jenny his Medal of Honor, saying "I got it just by doing what you told me to do," since Jenny told him to just run away instead of being brave in combat.
Ping-Pong[]
In 1969, Forrest joined the Army Special Services, where he entertained wounded military veterans with his ping-pong skills. His exceptional skills earned him a place in the All-American ping-pong team, with whom he traveled to China during the ping-pong diplomacy period of the early 1970s. Upon his return, Forrest was a national celebrity, "famous-er even than Captain Kangaroo", and was invited to New York City by Dick Cavett to appear on The Dick Cavett Show, where John Lennon was also a guest at the time. Hearing Forrest talking about the Chinese having "no possessions" and "no religion" during his interview with Dick would eventually inspire John to write the song "Imagine".
Soon after being discharged from the army, Forrest reunites and stays with Lieutenant Dan, now using a wheelchair, over the winter holidays. Dan has since become an alcoholic who has lost all faith in God, and was dismayed that such an "imbecile" like Forrest could earn the Medal of Honor and humiliate himself on national television. During a New Year's Eve celebration in 1971, Forrest persuades Lieutenant Dan to join him in the shrimping business as his first mate, in an effort to fulfill his promise made to Bubba earlier in Vietnam. Dan later invites two prostitutes named Carla and Lenore to his New Year's Day party, both of whom he eventually kicked out of his apartment for insulting Forrest when Forrest rejected their advances. Forrest apologized to Dan for ruining his party, simply saying that she "tasted like cigarettes", to which Dan replied by simply wishing Forrest a happy New Year.
In June 1972, Forrest was invited with the US ping-pong team to the White House, where he met another president, Richard Nixon, who offered him a room to stay in at his hotel. That night, Forrest was awakened by a group of people with flashlights breaking into an unlit office. Mistaking it for a power outage, Forrest called security guard Frank to inform him about the break-in, inadvertently initiating the Watergate scandal and leading to Richard Nixon's resignation in August 1974. In that same year, Forrest was honorably discharged from the army with the rank of Sergeant.
Upon his return to Alabama in August 1974, Forrest finds his Greenbow house filled with memorabilia capitalizing on his fame as a ping-pong player in China. At his mother's insistence, Forrest made $25,000 endorsing a brand of ping-pong paddles, and used most of the money to travel to Bubba's hometown and purchase a boat. When someone pointed out it was bad luck to have a boat without a name, Forrest names his boat 'Jenny', which he calls 'the most beautiful name in the whole wide world'. Unbeknownst to Forrest, Jenny had descended into a life of drugs, burglary and sexual promiscuity at this point, but an event in which she nearly slips and falls off a balcony as she "contemplates" suicide while high on drugs in a Los Angeles apartment shakes her to her core.
Later Forrest was visited by Lieutenant Dan who, just as he said he would do on New Year's Eve of 1971, had come to be Forrest's first mate. For several weeks, the two had no luck catching shrimp. However, things changed when the area was hit by Hurricane Carmen. Forrest's boat was the only one left standing and they found themselves with a monopoly of shrimp. Under the name Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, they soon became very wealthy. Apparently having faced his demons during the storm, Lieutenant Dan mentioned that he never thanked Forrest for saving his life in Vietnam, with Forrest quietly assuming that Dan made peace with God.
Alabama[]
Forrest returned home to Greenbow in September 1975 when he learned his mother was dying of cancer. After her death, Forrest stayed and left his shrimping industry in the hands of Lieutenant Dan and retired to mowing and cutting grass and lawns, as he apparently enjoys doing it. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Dan participated in a substantial investment into what Forrest says to be "some kind of fruit company". In reality, the company was the fledgling Apple Computer Company. With the money he got from the Apple investment, Forrest spent them on renovating the church he frequents, establishing a medical center at Bubba's hometown and giving Bubba's family Bubba's share of the investment money that is enough for them to never work again. Jenny returned to Greenbow and moved in with Forrest. The two spent time together catching up, and Forrest later described it as "the happiest time of [his] life again".
One day, they happened to walk past the now abandoned house that had belonged to Jenny's father. She stared transfixed for a moment, and then began throwing every rock she could find at it, before collapsing in despair, and now Forrest truly understands the ordeal she had been through as a child. On Independence Day, 1976, Forrest asked Jenny to marry him, but she turned him down, saying "You don't wanna marry me." Forrest replies with, "Why don't you love me, Jenny?... I'm not a smart man, but I know what love is." After this exchange, Jenny came to Forrest's bedroom, told him she loves him, and the two make love. Wanting to restart on her own, Jenny hails a cab very early the next morning and left before he awoke.
Forrest's new-found loneliness leads him to take a run "for no particular reason". At first, he decides to run to the end of the road, then across town, then to the Mississippi border, then all the way to the West Coast of the United States. Eventually, he criss-crosses the country several times over a span of three years. Forrest attracts media coverage, and eventually, dozens of followers initiating and inspiring what would become the running boom of the 1970s. Meanwhile, Jenny has taken a job as a waitress in Savannah, Georgia, and sees news coverage of Forrest's run on television as he is crossing the Mississippi River again. During the run, he inspires the phrase "Shit happens" to a bumper sticker salesman after stepping in a pile of dog shit. He also uses a yellow T-shirt provided to him by a shirt designer to wipe off his face after being splattered by mud from a big rig. In the process, he forms the iconic smiley face logo and tells the man to have a nice day. One day, while running through Monument Valley in the Western United States, Forrest suddenly stops on mile marker 13 of U.S. Route 163; his followers all stop and listen on in anticipation, expecting him to offer words of wisdom, but instead he simply announces that he's tired, then turns around and walks back to Alabama, leaving his followers dumbfounded at his sudden decision.
Present[]
In 1981, Forrest has been telling various people his life story on a bench at a bus stop in Chippewa Square. He tells his latest companion on the bench, an elderly woman, that he had recently received a letter from Jenny (during the televised assassination attempt of Ronald Reagan) asking him to come see her. When told Forrest's destination, the old lady informs him that it is only a few blocks away. Thanking her, Forrest sets off on foot towards Jenny's home. Forrest and Jenny are happy to see each other. However, before they can do much catching up, Forrest is introduced to Jenny's young son, a bright young boy whom she named Forrest after him. Forrest at first thinks she met another man named Forrest, until she tells Forrest that he is the boy's father. Forrest's fearful inquiry as to Little Forrest's intelligence leads Jenny to quickly assert that he is completely normal, and actually rather bright. Forrest then chats with his son as they watch "Bert and Ernie" on Sesame Street together.
Forrest learns that Jenny is sick from an unknown virus (implied to be either HIV or Hepatitis C, as both were unknown diseases at that time) which has no known cure. He invites her and Little Forrest to come home and stay with him. She asks him to marry her and he accepts. Forrest and Jenny's wedding is a quiet, intimate ceremony attended only by a handful of family and friends. Among the attendees is Lieutenant Dan, who has prosthetic legs made from a titanium alloy (claiming to be made of the same material as the Space Shuttle), with his Vietnamese fiancée Susan. It is the only time Jenny and Dan meet.
Forrest, Jenny, and Little Forrest only have a year together as a family before Jenny would pass away. Before she died, she asked Forrest what it was like in Vietnam. He responded by saying that it was nice, and when it stopped raining, it would be quiet and peaceful. He also states that while running in Oregon, it looked as if there were two skies and two mountains (since there was a lake in front of the mountain). Forrest also states that while running in the desert, when the sun was rising, it was the most beautiful sight ever. Jenny responds by saying that she wished she was there with him. Forrest smiles and says that she was.
Forrest had her buried under the tree where they played as children, then bought her childhood home and had it bulldozed. Though he misses Jenny terribly, Forrest becomes a good father to Little Forrest. It is stated by Forrest that she died on a Saturday, despite the date of death marked on her tombstone (22/3/1982) being a Monday.
Visiting Jenny's grave one day in 1982, he reflects on the idea of fate and destiny, wondering if Lieutenant Dan was right about people having their own destiny, or if his mother was right about description of life as floating around accidentally like on a breeze. Forrest eventually decides "maybe it's both, maybe both are happening at the same time." He leaves Jenny a letter from Little Forrest and tells her "If there's anything you need, I won't be far away." Forrest is last seen outside his home, sitting where he and his mother sat waiting for the bus when he was a child, seeing Little Forrest off on his bus ride to school, telling him that he loves him and that he will be waiting for him.
Personality[]
Forrest is described as a savant with extraordinary talent in numerical calculation, as shown when he states the exact amount of time in years, months, days and hours that he spent running across the country.
Forrest is incredibly patient, kind, and loyal. Despite Jenny frequently abandoning him for years at a time, he remained in love with her. While his intellectual disability made understanding the world difficult for him at times, he could be capable of wisdom, such as offering words of support to his friends, like when helping Lt. Dan overcome his suicidal depression; on the note of Dan, Forrest would sometimes struggle with metaphors, such as being confused by Dan noting he wanted to get his "sea legs," which seemed odd to Forrest due to the veteran's loss of legs during the Vietnam War.
Forrest always believed in the best in people, or at least, never suspected malice, as he considered presidents he'd met (JFK, LBJ, and Nixon) as nice people because of their politeness to him. While he didn't grieve as when a loved one died, he did express sympathy for historical figures he met when they were later assassinated, which he would also consider a loss to the world, too, or at least a shame.
While his limited intellect could make him not entirely understand the danger of certain situations, he was still brave; he risked his life in an attempt to save Bubba, even though it was in the middle of a chaotic battle.
Book[]
There is a number of differences that the film made from the book.
Forrest is somewhat cynical and abrasive in the book, as opposed to his more placid and naïve nature in the film. In school, he is infatuated with his teacher Miss Henderson, who teaches him to read with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and two other books he does not remember. By the time Forrest is 16, he is 6'6" (1.98 m), 242 pounds (110 kg), and plays high school football. After high school, Forrest takes a test at a local army recruitment center, and is told he is "Temporarily Deferred".
Forrest and Jenny meet again at the University of Alabama and play together in a folk band at the student union; the band being called the Cracked Eggs, where Forrest plays the harmonica. After one semester, Forrest flunks out of uni, before joining the army. In the infirmary, after Bubba's death, Forrest first meets Lt. Dan (since he wasn't his CO in the book), who tells Forrest that he feels Forrest is destined for something great. After playing ping-pong in China, Forrest inadvertently saves the life Mao Zedong by playing in a tournament.
After returning from China, Forrest reconnects with Jenny, but is arrested and institutionalized after a peace demonstration. When the doctors realize he has a talent for doing mathematics in his head, he is recruited as an astronaut for NASA. Whilst the film has him running around the country for over three years, the novel sends him into space. When Sue, a male orangutan on the flight, wrecks the ship, they crash-land in New Guinea and are captured by a tribe of cannibals, whose chief teaches Forrest to play chess.
After returning to the United States, Forrest meets President Nixon and runs into Dan, who is now homeless. They travel to Indianapolis to look for Jenny, and find her working in a tyre plant. Forrest begins working as a professional wrestler, fighting under the moniker "The Dunce". When Dan hatches a plan to rip off Forrest's manager, Jenny leaves in disgust. Forrest, who dreams of starting a shrimp business like Bubba wanted to, decides to head for Louisiana. Before he can go, he meets a chess champion who realizes his talents and enters him into a competition. This doesn't pan out, nor does working alongside Raquel Welch in a remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon.
Forrest and Sue eventually make it to Bubba's hometown. With advice from Bubba's father, he start a shrimping operation. This becomes so successful that he becomes a millionaire and manages to hire most of the people he'd previously encountered in his life to work for him. He is roped into running for the United States Senate (with the campaign slogan "We Got to Pee"), but is forced to drop out when the media uncovers his checkered past. Eventually, he and Sue move to Savannah, where Forrest performs as a one-man band. He finds Dan again, and runs into Jenny, who has a son, whom she reveals to be Forrest's. Forrest decides not to be a presence in his son's life, as Jenny is now married. Forrest, Sue, and Dan move to New Orleans.
The novel also provides additional backstory on his father. It is revealed that his father worked as a dockworker for the United Fruit Company. He was killed when a crate of bananas being loaded off of a boat fell on top of him and crushed him to death. Also, Jenny and his mother never died in the original book, although the sequel Gump and Co., written in response to the film, begins with both characters dying off-page.
Quotes[]
| “ | Hello. My name is Forrest. Forrest Gump. | „ |
| ~ Forrest introducing himself. |
| “ | Stupid is as stupid does. | „ |
| ~ Forrest's catchphrase. |
| “ | I'm not a smart man, but I know what love is. | „ |
| ~ Forrest to Jenny. |
| “ | He's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen but is he smart or is he...? | „ |
| ~ Forrest to Jenny upon learning he has a son. |
| “ | Drill Sgt: GUMP! What's your sole purpose in this army?! |
„ |
| ~ Boot camp |
| “ | Drill Sgt: GUUUMP!... Why did you put that weapon together so quickly, Gump?! |
„ |
| ~ Assembling an M14 |
Trivia[]
- There is a Forrest Gump brick in front of the Lucas Theatre.
- He mentions drinking fifteen bottles of pop in one sitting, which is physically and medically impossible.
- When Forrest receives a letter from Apple, the company is erroneously signed as "Apple Computer, Inc." despite being called "Apple Computer Company" at that time.
- There is some chronological inconsistency during 1963: the All-American team came together in December, JFK was killed in November, and George Wallace's protest took place in June.
- The high school scene (where Forrest's bullies chase him in their truck) may have been inspired by the bus scene in The Warriors, where the Turnbulls chase the Warriors in an old school bus.
- This was the first of two Tom Hanks films that featured Elvis. Hanks would later play Tom Parker in the film Elvis, a biopic about the artist from his early days until his death. Additionally, Hanks' character in Cast Away, Chuck Noland, is an Elvis fan.
- Oddly, in a film featuring many real people, Tom Hanks (who has played many real people in films) does not play a real person.
- In Philadelphia, Andrew Beckett is loosely based on Geoffrey Bowers.
- In Apollo 13, Jim Lovell is based on Jim Lovell.
- In Cast Away, Chuck Noland is loosely based on Thomas Musgrave.
- In Catch Me If You Can, Carl Hanratty is based on Joseph Shea.
- In The Terminal, Viktor Navorski is based on Mehran Karimi Nasseri.
- In Sully, Sully Sullenberger is based on Sully Sullenberger.
- In A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Fred Rogers is based on Fred Rogers.
- In Elvis, Tom Parker is based on Colonel Tom Parker.
Licensing[]
This article contains content derived from Wikipedia, licensed under CC-BY-SA.
External Links[]
- Forrest Gump on the Pure Good Wiki
- Forrest Gump on the Forrest Gump Wiki