Directions:
Part I
Read the article on the next page. Answer the
two questions at the bottom of the page. This is
YOUR opinion of the movie and article.
Part II
Answer all of the 19 questions following the
article. These questions are based on the movie
portraying Forrest as a national folk HERO.
Forrest Gump, Our National Folk Zero
By Hal Hinson , Washington Post Staff Writer, August 14, 1994
The sap is rising in America, and his name is Forrest Gump.
In this country, there's nothing harder to argue with than success, and, to nearly everyone's surprise,
"Forrest Gump" has become a success that goes beyond the film's soaring box office numbers. But few
things need to be challenged more fiercely than this gentle, defiantly peculiar account of an idiot pilgrim's
progress through three decades of American history.
Stiff as a pole with his hair cut military short and his shirt buttoned up to his Adam's apple, Forrest Gump
has become the pop-culture hero of the '90s. He's emerged as an Everyman symbol of all things to all
people, moving from movie reviews to the op-ed pages, where essayists and critics have compared him to
everyone from Huck Finn to "Harvey's" Elwood P. Dowd.
To some, Gump, like Shakespeare's fools, is a figure of sanity in an insane world; to others, he marks a
return to decency and basic family values. His own inventor, novelist Winston Groom, lumps him in with
Steinbeck's Lennie, Faulkner's Benjy and "that Doy-chee-eveskie guy's idiot."
But, despite the fictional Alabama simpleton's ability to be whatever his beholder wants him to be, Gump
is none of these things. In truth -- and this is what makes him such a scary phenomenon -- he is hardly
anything at all.
The harder you look at Gump, the less there is to see. He's the David Souter of movie heroes. Aside from
his mother's folksy aphorisms, Gump believes in nothing and stands for nothing. Though he plays football
and Ping-Pong, he's not interested in sports; though he meets three presidents, he holds no political views.
He is not driven by money or sex or the need to do good. He is the closest thing America has yet produced
to a man without qualities.
What's strange is that no one seems to be bothered by this. Traditionally, our notion of heroism involves
deliberate action. Our heroes choose to do brave things or endure hardships. But when Gump behaves
heroically -- as he does in Vietnam where he rescues half his unit and wins the Congressional Medal of
Honor -- he does so almost by accident. Because he doesn't quite know what's going on.
Gump moves through his entire life without choosing anything. His existence is almost completely
dictated by happenstance and dumb luck. Gump is the antithesis of Job -- success falls at his feet, like the
feather that drifts to the ground at the opening and close of the film. When his shrimping business is about
to fail, God steps in and bails him out with a hurricane. Grump just happens to become an All-American,
a goodwill ambassador and a "gazillionaire" -- all without effort or pain.
Somehow, though, Gump is the perfect embodiment of this summer of O.J.'s fall from grace and
Whitewater, the political scandal with no there there. As a hero, he comes along at a time when the
concept of heroism itself seems deeply compromised if not extinct. In last year's "Last Action Hero," an
exhausted Arnold Schwarzenegger threw his leg over the ledge of a building and wearily complained,
"This hero stuff has its limits." He was right: The hero in movies seems to be dying of blandness. In films
such as "Speed," "Blown Away" and "In the Line of Fire," it's the villains who get all the good lines.
The hero's weariness is simply the fatigue of being the good guy. The character who does things is no
longer heroic. As Clinton's experience has proved, doing things is polarizing and controversial. It opens
the door for attack and low approval ratings. Better to do nothing and play it safe. Like Bob Dole.
"Gump," it seems, suggests that a good guy need not do anything. If Arnold was the "Last Action Hero,"
Gump is the "First Non-Action Hero."
While the film doesn't explicitly state that life would be altogether easier if one were stupid, it does leave
the impression that, in general, thinking is grossly overrated and, in the long run, painful, and that the
wise man is better off living his life according to a Whitman's Sampler of simplistic homilies.
And it's true that there is something attractive about a character who isn't tangled up in the endless
complexities of the modern world. Gump is free of the anxieties of deliberation and reflection. The
question is whether this is actually freedom or the abdication of an essential aspect of being grown-up and
alive.
One of the problems with "Forrest Gump" is that it doesn't seem to place much value on experience. In
Groom's novel, Gump is quite prodigious sexually; once Jenny even leaves him because he has cheated on
her. But Robert Zemekis and Eric Roth -- the film's director and writer -- have been careful to erase all
traces of sexuality from their hero's personality. When Jenny first comes on to him in college, it makes
him feel "dizzy." And even when the couple finally consummate their relationship, Jenny initiates the
encounter and Gump is left, in effect, with his purity intact.
The character Jenny illustrates the filmmakers' bunker mentality toward life. An abused child who grew
up searching, mostly in the wrong places, for some sort of meaning and contentment, she is a tortured soul
buffeted by the social storms of her day. She throws herself into every new social craze only to come
away scarred and disillusioned.
Unlike Jenny, Gump remains above the normal drives -- and therefore the normal taints -- of the average
adult. This places him beyond childlike, beyond even the child-in-a-man's body that Tom Hanks played in
"Big." He becomes, in effect, a holy man or a saint. But though Gump suggests soulfulness and depth, the
filmmakers poke fun at those who see Gump as a sage. In their view, a holy fool is just another of the
things that Gump is not.
Indifferent to History
Though it operates on the stage of historical events, "Forrest Gump" doesn't seem to have any real interest
in history. Or for that matter, any real point of view. Everything from Elvis to Vietnam to Squeaky
Fromme registers as a blip on the film's satiric radar, only to quickly and inconsequently vanish from
sight. In the world according to Gump, history is as weightless as Gump himself.
Gump brushes up against real-life events, reducing them to jokes. At the University of Alabama, he
comes upon a crowd that's gathered to watch as Gov. George Wallace attempts to keep several black
students from attending classes. The scene at the school is tense, with Wallace glowering fiercely at the
front door of the building. But Gump -- who has been injected into actual footage of the event by the
filmmakers -- is oblivious to the import of the moment and, slipping around behind Wallace, goosenecks
over the governor's shoulder like a fan trying to get a better view at a ballgame.
Though later Gump enters more directly into the historic moment by picking up a notebook dropped by
one of the black students, his presence on the scene remains disturbingly neutral. As an individual, he has
no interest whatsoever in what is happening around him at this or any other moment in time. He's not
oblivious, exactly, just indifferent, unmoved and unchanged.
The film's use of actual events, like the assassinations of the Kennedys or the attempts on Ford and
Reagan, pushes buttons in the audience that aren't attached to anything in the movie. They're just there,
dropped in to mark the passage of time, but they contribute a feeling of despair that the movie isn't
prepared to deal with. After Gump's encounter with President Kennedy -- which ends with his nowfamous "I gotta pee" line -- Gump blandly appraises the president, then adds that, "For no particular
reason, somebody shot that nice young president while he was riding in his car."
This isn't just idiotic, it's coarse and insulting. "Gump's" view of history is bumper-sticker fodder -- it just
happens. But history doesn't just happen; history is made. And as seductive as the notion might be that
there are "no particular reasons" for such traumas as the murder of a president, the opposite is true. Events
do not occur in a vacuum, but as a result of all kinds of forces in society. "Gump" lets us off the hook by
suggesting that we needn't bother ourselves with attempting to make sense of the world. In the face of
tough questions and moral ambiguity, it lays down a "Don't Worry, Be Happy" riff.
The strange thing here is that people who normally consider themselves too sophisticated for such a banal
"feel good" message are being suckered by the picture's savvy packaging and swallowing it whole. They
don't seem to notice -- or don't care -- that Gump doesn't direct his life in the way that most characters do
and has no real motives or drives or psychology. When Gump asks Jenny to marry him, declaring, "I'm
not a smart man, but I know what love is," they're happy to believe him even though there's nothing in the
movie to suggest his statement is true.
There's a lot of talk in the film about finding one's destiny, but in the end, the movie punts on the whole
issue. Standing over his wife's grave, Gump can't decide whether we make our own destinies or are blown
about by random fate. "Maybe it's both," he muses.
It would be nice if, just this once, Gump could actually make up his mind about something. That would
have meant that life made some impression on him; that he had taken some meaning out of Jenny's
suffering and learned from experience. Jenny was out in the world, testing herself and risking failure. She
may be a tragic figure, but Jenny was immersed in her life in a way that Gump could never be -- not
because of his lack of intelligence but because of the filmmakers' determination to turn him into a
universally likable folk hero. Jenny, not Gump, is the film's bravest character. Compared with her, Gump
is a real zero.
Do Americans like Forrest Gump precisely because he is innocent and naive?
Should Gump be seen as a national folk HERO or a folk ZERO?
Answer on the next page….
Answer part I here….
Part II
DIRECTIONS: CHOOSE 6 of the nineteen questions to answer. Type your answers
in a different color font.
FORREST GUMP….FINAL QUESTIONS
1. Do you agree with Roger Ebert's characterization of Forrest Gump:
"Its hero, played by Tom Hanks, is a thoroughly decent man with an IQ of 75, who manages between the 1950s
and the 1980s to become involved in every major event in American history. And he survives them all with only
honesty and niceness as his shields."
2. Do you agree with Ebert that Forrest Gump (1994) is a meditation on our times:
"The movie is more of a meditation on our times, as seen through the eyes of a man who lacks cynicism and takes
things for exactly what they are. Watch him carefully and you will understand why some people are criticized for
being "too clever by half." Forrest is clever by just exactly enough."
3. Do you agree with Ebert's explanation for why Forrest Gump is a magical movie:
"...Between them Forrest and Jenny have covered all of the landmarks of our recent cultural history, and the
accommodation they arrive at in the end is like a dream of reconciliation for our society. What a magical movie."
4. Do you think that Ellen Goodmen is being too cynical in her characterization of Forrest Gump:
"Is there a message here? If he's good, is it because he doesn't have the brains to be bad or bitter?"
5. What do you think the Director of Forrest Gump, Robert Zemeckis, means by this characterization of Forrest
Gump:
"Because Forrest Gump is a pure and simple individual without any opinions or politics, he can travel through a
tapestry of American images spanning three decades, reflecting back the mayhem and the madness that's going on
around him.''
6. Do you agree with film reviewer Hal Hinson that Forrest Gump is simply an idiot, who "doesn't direct his life in
the way that most characters do and has no real motives or drives or psychology" and "aside from his mother's
folksy aphorisms, Gump believes in nothing and stands for nothing"?
7. What do you think is the role of Forrest Gump's mother's sayings, which some critics call gumpisms, throughout
the movie? Are we supposed to take such sayings as "Stupid is as stupid does" and "Life is a box of chocolates.
You never know what you're going to get" seriously?
8. Why does Forrest Gump throughout the movie protect and defend Jenny from all the men who threaten her?
9. What does Forrest Gump's mother mean when she says: "You make our own destiny. You have to do the best
with what God gave you"?
10. Why does Jenny seem to jump from one failed experience to the next, wandering across America trying to find
herself and the meaning of her life?
11. Do you think that Forrest Gump is sincere when he tells Jenny, "I am not a smart man, but I know what love is"?
What evidence do we have that Gump really knows what love is?
12. Why does Forrest Gump spend over three years running back and forth across the nation? What does Forrest
Gump mean when he says: "You've got to put the past behind you before you can move on. That's what my
running was about"?
13. Is Forrest Gump proud of his son? Does he think he can be a good father even though he is "not smart"?
14. Do you think both Jenny and Lieutenant Dan finally make peace with their lives? Why does Jenny go back to
Forrest and marry him?
15. Why does Forrest Gump begin and end with the same feather floating in the wind. How does this feather help
open and close the movie?
16. How does this statement by Forrest Gump at Jenny's grave help us understand the larger meaning of the film:
"Jenny, I don't know if Momma was right or if, if it's Lieutenant Dan. I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if
we're all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I, I think maybe it's both. Maybe both is happening at
the same time. I miss you, Jenny. If there's anything you need, I won't be far away."
17. What does this interaction between Forrest and Jenny tell us about their characters and their lives?
Jenny: Do you ever dream, Forrest, about who you're gonna be?
Forrest: Who I'm gonna be?
Jenny: Yeah.
Forrest: Aren't I going to be me?
18. What allows Forrest Gump to survive all the turmoil and agony of life between the 1950s and the 1990s? Is
Gump really just an idiot, a man without character and understanding, who just floats through life like a feather
"accidentally floating on a breeze"?
19. Does Jenny die of AIDS? Why does the movie simply call it "a virus"?