25 pages • 50 minutes read
Winston GroomForrest Gump
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1986A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Forrest’s Harmonica
Forrest’s introduction to harmonica is the first indication he is gifted.He takes to it instantly. The harmonica travels with him through the gigs with The Cracked Eggs, through the Vietnam War, and finally is still there with him in New Orleans as he and Dan and Sue travel together. Music is an easy to way make people happy. Every time Forrest plays, it has a soothing effect on him and others. It is also significant that the harmonica was a gift. It was through the giving of the gift that Forrest was able to begin discovering and nurturing his own talents.
Games
Games are made of rules and dependent on patterns. In this way, something with a rigid structure like chess or ping pong is the opposite of life’s chaos. Forrest is naturally and immediately good at all games. He is able to make former masters play like children. However, by the novel’s ends, Forrest has achieved so much, it is almost as if he treated life like a game, without quite understanding the rules. This is because he did know the most important rule, which is evident in the book’s final paragraph: “I tried to do the right thing” (227).
Activism
As an adult, Jenny is always engaged in an activist. Forrest is always slightly confused by her ability to reach such heights of passionate fury for so many disparate causes. In some ways, the process of protesting matters as much to Jenny as the targets of the protests themselves. Forrest doesn’t understand why something like a protest has to be so complex. He thinks the Vietnam War was a horrible thing and says so in plain language. He is an activist for kindness and compassion, managing to lead by example without ever venturing into anger or bile. The implication is that if everyone took asimilar attitude to Forrest’s, the goals of any protest would eventually bring themselves about without the need to organize or polarize any groups of the population.
