Forrest Gump: Winston Groom’s Holy Fool and the American Dream
Everyone around him thinks Forrest Gump is an idiot, and Forrest half believes it himself. Winston Groom’s 1986 novel, the book behind the Oscar-winning 1994 film, turns that assumption inside out: a man with the mind of a child, free of prejudice and embarrassment, ends up living the American dream more fully than the clever people who laugh at him.
Author: Winston Groom (1943–2020)
Title: Forrest Gump (1986)
Format: English paperback (Black Swan), 240 pages
Scope: Comic, satirical novel narrated by Forrest himself, from college football to Vietnam and beyond
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/0552996092 (ASIN 0552996092)
A Misunderstood Genius
Forrest is special, naive and bold: someone who always acts and answers in the most unexpected way, and who manages to shake up the monotony of life around him. He is the personification of the real American dream. Nothing stops him from enjoying the world, because he comes to it without prejudice or shame.
The publisher’s description sums up the range of his travels: football under Bear Bryant, the Vietnam War, meetings with Presidents Johnson and Nixon, even an encounter with Chairman Mao. The novel is narrated in Forrest’s own voice, and its comedy is broader and bawdier than the film’s.
Humour as a Survival Skill
Facing life’s difficulties with humour, Forrest proves smarter than most. He adapts to circumstances, enjoys the smallest things and lives new experiences every minute. He learns from his mistakes and seizes every chance to try something new, and without looking for it he keeps landing in the most varied and often comic situations. Almost by accident, he reaches the unreachable.
Not Quite the Film
Readers who know only the 1994 film starring Tom Hanks are in for surprises. Groom’s Forrest is 6 feet 6 inches tall and weighs 240 pounds, and his adventures are wilder and bawdier: he becomes a professional wrestler, a chess player and even an astronaut, sharing a space mission with an orangutan named Sue. The film softened the satire and turned Forrest into a gentle national symbol; the novel is sharper about the institutions he stumbles through, from college football to the army and Washington politics.
The Writer Behind Forrest
Winston Groom grew up in Mobile, Alabama, and served in Vietnam as an army officer before becoming a journalist and author. That experience gives the war chapters an edge that is easy to miss beneath the jokes. He later wrote a sequel, Gump and Co. (1995), as well as several works of military history. Forrest Gump remains his best-known book, and it reads quickly: the unpunctuated, misspelled voice of the narrator is part of the fun, and part of the point.
Who Will Enjoy It
Anyone who likes comic picaresque novels in the tradition of Voltaire’s Candide, where an innocent hero wanders through the follies of his age, will find a lot to enjoy here. It also works well for intermediate readers of English, thanks to its short chapters and plain vocabulary.
An Unreliable Speller, a Reliable Heart
What gives the book its warmth is Forrest’s loyalty: to his mother, to his friend Bubba, and above all to Jenny, whom he loves through every twist of the story. He never quite understands the world, but he never stops trying to do right by the people in it.
Why Read It Now
It is a story full of optimism and hope: a journey in search of happiness. If you only know the film, the novel is worth reading for the differences as much as the similarities. Groom’s Forrest is rougher, funnier and more satirical, and he is still the same good-hearted outsider who shows the rest of us how to take life as it comes.
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