In TvTropes archives, under the section for "Idiot Houdini" we have this entry:
"Forrest
Gump... ...He fumbles and stumbles through life pursuing on a whim
whatever seems like a good idea at the time, yet nothing he ever does
throughout the film leads
to negative consequences for him."
I
have to disagree with it. A great deal does go wrong for Forrest. He
meets with great success and great tragedy. He is violently bullied as a
child. Loses a close friend
in combat in Vietnam. Has a difficult and troubled relationship with
the woman he loves, which often places him in violent and dangerous
situations. Loses his wife to illness and has to raise his son alone.
I
want the reader to pause for a moment and imagine this life again, but
told through different eyes. Your childhood friend and pseudo-sweetheart
is sent into foster care
because her father is sexually abusive. She is expelled for posing in
Playboy, and ends up bouncing from bad situation to bad situation. You
do well in College playing football, and would probably drafted to the
NFL, but are instead drafted into Vietnam. There
much of your squad is massacred, including your closest friend. You
manage to save some of your squad and your commanding officer- but he
ends up crippled and traumatized with PTSD and caustically blaming you
because he wanted to die. You find a talent for
table tennis and are used by the military as a political show piece.
You eventually do meet your childhood sweetheart and marry her, only to
discover she has a terminal illness and you have a son you'd never met
before. Also this happens around the time your
mother dies. Keep in mind you never knew your father. Through luck and
circumstance, you made it rich due to a natural disaster; another case
where, like in Vietnam, you were rewards while those around you
suffered.
Told
through any other eyes, the tale of the life of Forrest Gump would be a
tragedy on a scale with "The Great Gatsby" or "Citizen Kane". The Key
difference here, is Gump's
perspective. Now, we know that Forrest Gump is cognitively disabled to a
certain degree. But, and this is key, so does he.
Two
key points in the film make that clear. The first is his declaration to
Jenny that "I'm not a smart man, but I know what love is." The Second
is his fear, upon meeting
his son, that Forrest Jr. may share his disability: "He's the most
beautiful thing I've ever seen but is he smart or is he - (Places hand
on chest).."
Forrest
is not smart, but he is self aware. The deaths of Bubba, and Jenny and
his mother all show that he is not incapable of experiencing sadness or
despair. His generosity
to Bubba's mother, and Lieutenant Dan, and his bulldozing of jenny's
childhood house show his understanding of the troubles of other and of
his empathy and compassion.
Forrest
could easily have fallen to the same despair that afflicted Dan and
Jenny. He had the capacity, the film makes that clear if we look- he
chose not to do so. And in
so doing he lifted up and redeemed those around him, Dan and Jenny in
particular.
Forrest Gump isn't some idealist who believes unflinchingly in some divine plan, as evidenced by this quote:
"I
don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we're all just floatin'
around accidental-like on a breeze, but I, I think maybe it's both."
Forrest isn't an Idiot Houdini in this film, he's an anti-nihilist. And just maybe, he's a living Buddha.
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