Compare/Contrast: Forrest Gump
Alexander Low ENC1101
Date: 12/2/12
Assignment: Compare/ Contrast
Forrest Gump: Movie Better Than Book
Have you ever watched a movie that was made off of a book, but the movie was better? Well if you have ever watched and read Forrest Gump, you would find out that the movie has well surpassed the book. In both stories the main character Forrest Gump goes through a series of misfortunate events that eventually turn him into an American hero and millionaire. In each event of his life he meets new people and befriends them due to his kindness and stupidity. This also could be for the reason of feeling bad for him, but is not mentioned in either story. Even though he has an IQ of below normal, he still can be very smart in certain categories. With these hints of genius he would be considered an idiot savant. In other words he is “An intellectually disabled person who exhibits extraordinary ability in a highly specialized area….”(www.thefreedictionary.com/idiot+savant). The idiot savant figure has been used in other novels besides Gump though. For an example, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Voltaire’s Candide, Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, and Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men (Domino, 2). In the book Forrest Gump does everything that happened in the movie plus a few additional things. Gump in both stories plays college football, becomes an incredible war hero, starts a huge shrimp company, and plays ping-pong for the United States Army against China, but in the novel he also becomes an astronaut who gets stranded on a cannibal island, a champion chess player, and a professional wrestler given the name “The Dunce”. These events just take the book way to far from reality. He meets Jenny as a childhood friend and falls in love with her hoping that one day they could be together. He loves his Mom who was always very supportive of him as a child, and cares deeply about his two friends Lt. Dan and Bubba. His Dad is gone from the story in both cases. “My daddy, he got kilt just
Date: 12/2/12
Assignment: Compare/ Contrast
Forrest Gump: Movie Better Than Book
Have you ever watched a movie that was made off of a book, but the movie was better? Well if you have ever watched and read Forrest Gump, you would find out that the movie has well surpassed the book. In both stories the main character Forrest Gump goes through a series of misfortunate events that eventually turn him into an American hero and millionaire. In each event of his life he meets new people and befriends them due to his kindness and stupidity. This also could be for the reason of feeling bad for him, but is not mentioned in either story. Even though he has an IQ of below normal, he still can be very smart in certain categories. With these hints of genius he would be considered an idiot savant. In other words he is “An intellectually disabled person who exhibits extraordinary ability in a highly specialized area….”(www.thefreedictionary.com/idiot+savant). The idiot savant figure has been used in other novels besides Gump though. For an example, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Voltaire’s Candide, Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot, and Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men (Domino, 2). In the book Forrest Gump does everything that happened in the movie plus a few additional things. Gump in both stories plays college football, becomes an incredible war hero, starts a huge shrimp company, and plays ping-pong for the United States Army against China, but in the novel he also becomes an astronaut who gets stranded on a cannibal island, a champion chess player, and a professional wrestler given the name “The Dunce”. These events just take the book way to far from reality. He meets Jenny as a childhood friend and falls in love with her hoping that one day they could be together. He loves his Mom who was always very supportive of him as a child, and cares deeply about his two friends Lt. Dan and Bubba. His Dad is gone from the story in both cases. “My daddy, he got kilt just