Reflection Essay on Forrest Gump

Alma F. Florendo STUDENT NUMBER:  2009-5226 Fil-Canadian Training & Devt. Center for Caregivers- Makati Subject: Special Needs Instructor: Sir. JV Vergara Reaction Paper “Forrest Gump” Based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Winston Groom, Forrest Gump is a 1994 American comedy-drama film, starring Tom Hanks, Robin Wright Penn,Gary Sinise, Mykelti Williamson, and Sally Field.

It is a story of Forrest Gump’s epicjourney through life meeting historical figures, influencing popular culture, and experiencing first-hand historic events of the late 20th century while being largely unaware of their significance, due to his borderline mental retardation. The story started off with Forrest Gump, sitting at a bus stop in Savannah,Georgia, where a feather falls on him. When he picked up and put that feather on a book entitled Curious George, he then starts to tell his story to the woman sitting beside him.

During the course of the story, the listeners at the bus stop change regularly where each shows different attitudes towards him, from disbelief and indifference. As the film that we had watched, we learned about his story from childhood to during his time after the war in Vietnam. There, we witnessed his struggles and the struggles of the people around him. First, there is his mother, who taught him many wonderful things and even had sex with the principal of the school just to let Forrest enter the school and be treated equally like any other normal students.

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During the first day of school Forrest met his very first friend, Jenny Curran, and became best friends with her. Despite having a below level intelligence quotient (IQ), Forrest develops an ability to run at great speed due to his running from bullies from school and this gets him to college through a football scholarship. After his college graduation, he got enlisted to the army and makes friends with a black man named Bubba, who talks nothing but shrimp and even convince Forrest to go into a shrimping business after the war.

They were sent to Vietnam where he had saved many members of his platoon including his platoon leader during an ambush and where Bubba was killed in action. He was then awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism. While on recovery from a gunshot wound on his buttocks, his discovers his uncanny ability for ping-pong and even gain popularity and later on competitively play against Chinese teams in ping pong diplomacy. He is subsequent promoted to sergeant and during an anti-war rally held in Washington, D. C. he reunites with Jenny, who has been living a hippie counterculture lifestyle. This is where the film ended and I can say that it has been enough to show us that the disability that Forrest Gump had can be compared to that of an innocent child who has been taught a simple life by his mother. The struggles that he had encountered, especially during the war in Vietnam, can be considered as a hard part of anyone’s life if they we’re on his shoes but Forrest did just well in war and did not even considered it as a big thing.

There are many lessons that we can learn from his story, not just about how to treat people with disabilities or how they walk on a normal environment, but from the story of Forrest Gump, I had learned how lucky he is to be taught properly and greatly by his mother, on how he handles the people that we saw treating him improperly, and how he goes on with his life without even blaming other people or himself, that he had just accepted who he is and just like what his mother taught him, he is not different and is just like any other normal kids.

If only normal people can be just like Forrest Gump, taking the struggles in life as a challenge and not as a problem, that everything that happens is according to God’s plan and that he has a reason for it, just imagine the wonderful things that can happen in one person’s life or even the influence that we can give to other people.

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