Forrest Gump: Life Is A Box Of Chocolates And Other Lessons

The film Forrest Gump was a 1994 American comedy-drama film directed and produced by Robert Zemeckis. He goes through his life with his mother’s saying “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get” In mind, this quote means that you never know what will happen next or if it will be good or a bad event. The film depicts several decades in the life of Tom Hanks with all the things he has done for example: he joined the all-American football team, met President Kennedy, won the Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroism in the Vietnam war, defeated the Chinese national ping pong team, met President Johnson, spoke at an anti-war rally at the Washington Monument. Forrest Gump has experienced much in his life, even though he is a simpleminded but kind-hearted man from Alabama who witnessed and influences, historical events dating back to the late 1900s in the United States. The film shows many examples of an epic. An epic is a long narrative about heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Some examples of epics are when he protected Jenny from a guy who was grabbing her in his car. He fought in the Vietnam War, and he played football at the University of Alabama.

One example of an epic was when Forrest Gump went to visit Jenny at her college and he expected her to run up to him and give him a hug, but none of that happened when he got to her college, he saw Jenny with another dude in a shaking car so he thought she was getting attacked so he pulled open the car door then he pulled the dude out and started beating him up then Jenny ran out of the car and started hitting Forrest Gump screaming at him. “Forrest... Forrest... Stop he didn’t do anything.. leave him alone” The guy got up off the ground and punched Forrest in the face then got back in his car and drove off irritated. Jenny was embarrassed.

Another example of an epic was when he was running away from the bullies. For instance, Forrest got bullied ever since he went to school for the way he walked and talked. He walked kinda funny because he had a weird shaped spinal cord so he had to have crutches around his legs, which made him different from everyone and the bullies saw him as a target so they chased him to his house, but while all of that happening the only thing he heard was Jenny “Run Forrest Run… Run” he took off which broke his crutches into a dozen pieces while he was running but that did not stop him. After a few years, he was a senior in High School the bullies still picked on him because he was not all the way there in his mind. He was trying to run from the bullies that he ran through the football field which surprised the coaches it had them saying “who or what was that? They can run fast. I need them on my football team.” Which got him accepted into the University of Alabama.

The last characteristic of an epic was when he fought in the Vietnam War. He put his life on the line for everyone’s freedom. He met a guy named Bubba along with other military men who became his friend which he considered them all family, but when they were on the battlefield a bomb struck them by surprise and killed a lot of his friends (aka his brothers). “Bubba was my best friend. Even I know that ain’t something you can notice just around the corner.”

Their captain told the rest to evacuate, which they did but when Forrest realized that the captain wasn’t with them. He ran back to the battlefield to search for the captain when he found him, he carried him to safety because he remembered that the captain said: “No one gets left behind, no matter what happens, they are your brothers.”

In conclusion, As it is stated in the thesis and hook that Forrest was the hero of the film. It also talked about how his adventures represented an epic. For example the first paragraph said that he protected Jenny from some drunk dude who was rubbing up against her and everything, then in the second paragraph, it talked about how he fought in the Vietnam War, which takes a lot of Courage since he almost sacrificed his life for his friend which takes guts he also took off running and he didn't stop he kept on running everywhere he traveled around half of the globe then he got tired at some point and walked back home. He spent days running which many people saw him so they joined him. By the time he got tired, he had over a million people running with him; he was all over the news and everything.