Forrest Gump

Jenny is Forrest’s love interest. Besides his mother, she is the person he has known the longest. They meet as children and have known each other for thirty years when they meet in Savannah near the novel’s end. Jenny is a freespirit who throws herself into various activist causes and a multitude of unharmonious relationships with men. Forrest is the one man in her life who never treats anyone with malice, and who never reduces her to what he can get from her. It is impossible for them not to love each other, and she shows that he has all of the most desirable qualities in a person, except for his limited IQ. 

Dan represents the novel’s spirit of pessimism. He swings between extreme optimism when the reader meets him, to existential despair and extreme political fury near the end of the novel. Dan cares for Forrest and roots for him because Dan has been unsuccessful in controlling his own life. Because he can contribute to Forrest’s adventures, Dan is able to see that even he can be responsible for good in the world. 

Forrest’s mother is a classic literary mother. She worries about her son, constantly tries to help him, blames herself for some of his failings and hardships, and cheers for him when he succeeds. Her greatest fear is that he will be “put away” in an mental institution where he will experience no tenderness. After each of his incidents, she tries to give him the best counsel she can. She is a highly sympathetic character because, although she tries to impart all of the lessons a mother should teach a son, she knows that the chances of Forrest learning and retaining what she says is slim.