Forrest Gump Tragedy

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The movie Forrest Gump is not one that you traditionally look at as a tragedy.

Sure, it

has glimpses of sadness intertwined within the a happy life story of the main character,

Forrest, who in the end gets a happy ending. However, if you stray away from the main

character and move over to one of the most important side characters you can find

more of the aspects of a tragic protagonist. The side character I felt embodied the tragic

protagonist point of view the best is Jenny. Jenny is Forrest’s best friend, who comes

into his life as a child and grows to become his love interest. Jenny is fiercely protective

of Forrest. We meet Jenny in the beginning when she is a child having lost her mother.

We watch Jenny and Forrest grow to teenagers, college students, and young adults.

We watch Jenny grow into a young adult who eventually succombs to the AIDS virus.

As the movie goes on more and more aspects of a tragic protagonist are made

apparent. We start off the movie feeling sympathy for her. Eventually her

hamartia,peripiteia, and anagnorisis are also revealed.

As I mentioned above, we start off feeling sympathy for Jenny pretty early on in the

movie. When we first meet Jenny, it is on a school bus. She is the only one who is

willing to let Forrest sit next to her. This simple action sets their entire relationship into

motion. As the movie progresses we learn that Jenny’s mom died when Jenny was only

five years old. This is the first thing that helps people feel sympathy for her. She is only

a young girl and is forced to grow up without out the guidance and influence of a

mother. With the passing of her mother, Jenny’s father becomes an alcoholic who

focuses his abusive behaviors onto Jenny and her sisters as a way to release his anger

about the life he now has to lead. His way of releasing those emotions is by physically
and sexually abusing the girls. We don’t ever meet Jenny’s sisters, but we see Jenny as

his sole focus of this abuse in the movie. Early on, Jenny wants to escape from the

reality of what her life had become after losing her mother. She would pray to get far

away from him and his abuse, and the viewer can feel sympathy for her. As the movie

progresses and we see Jenny grow into a young for college we see yet another

example of a bad decision Jenny makes as a result of the life that she has had. She

makes the decision to pose for Playboy, wearing her college sweater, never seeing the

negative affects it would have on the college and her role as a student there. She was

doing the best thing she knew to do to make money and continue her education. After

getting kicked out of her college, Jenny goes on to work at a strip club, again not

realizing the negative affects. Jenny wanted to be a musician and the club was a place

she could take her talents and support herself, never realizing that men were simply

wanting to fawn over her naked body. Some people might not feel sympathy for her as

she made that choice but I do. Growing up Jenny learned that she was going to have to

take care of herself. So, she is in the mindset that you have to do whatever you can to

survive and she knows that in order to survive you need quick money. In her mind

posing for Playboy and working at a strip club were simply ways for her to survive on

her own. One last scene where I feel sympathy for her is when we learn she remains

in a relationship with a man who hits her. This brings a sense of deja vu to the viewer as

the boyfriend reminds them of Jenny’s dad who in and of himself was physically

abusive. Jenny was used to the male figure in her life being abusive.
Now, let me move on to her hamartia. I struggled to find something that could be

considered a hamartia. We talked about hamartia not as a fatal flaw but as someone

missing the mark. Now it easy to find a fatal flaw for Jenny. She is a selfish woman who

likes to do what she wants with really no thoughts about others and their feelings or with

disregard to the negative effects it has on her life. In saying that, I do believe she truly

cares for Forrest as a person and her best friend. I also genuinely think she wants to

find contentment in her life. She wants to be able to settle down and live a “normal” life,

but the way her mind and morals were shaped as a child lead her to be unable to do

that. I believe this is how she misses the mark. If she was able to get over her past and

accept Forrest as someone that genuinely loved her, she could have saved her self

from her past and the poor decisions that led to her acquiring a deadly disease. Forrest

tried multiple times to have her stay with him and live a better life, but everytime she told

him no and went off with a boyfriend or a group of hippies, who were negative

influences, to make more poor decisions such as illegal drugs and unsafe sex. It is not

until she receives her poor prognosis that she decides to allow Forrest to give her a

good life.

Now I am going to move on to her peripiteia. A peripiteia is a reversal of fortune or good

news is bad news. The example of peripiteia that I found was towards the end of the

movie when she finally gets her life together. She has a stable job waitressing and has

become a mother. Everything seems good until it is revealed that she has an incurable

disease. In the movie it is not specifically stated that she has AIDS but all of the signs

lead towards that diagnosis. This is peropiteia because she had finally got her life

straightened out and making good decisions, when llife decided to throw her a
curveball. This diagnosis means that Jenny is never going to see her child grow up. She

will inadvertently become her own mother, minus the abusive father of the child. She is

going to have to trust that Forrest is able to raise their son, but knows her son wil not

grow up in the same circumstances that she herself had to.

The last aspect of a tragic protagonist that I am going to talk about is an anagnorisis.

This is the moment of recognition that tragic protagonists usually have. In Jenny’s case,

I believe her moment of anagnorisis is when she finally realizes that she needs Forrest

and that she has truly cared for him all of these years. Deep down I think she knew that

she loved Forrest their entire friendship. She realizes that Forrest can give her, and

ultimately their son a great life, much different from her own. It just took her until she is

near the end of her life to realize this. She eventually marries Forrest and moves into

his childhood home. She lives out the rest of her life safe and secure in a home filled

with love. The movie and Jenny come full circle, where Jenny is safe again. Forrest

protects Jenny just like when they were kids and Forrest would try to keep Jenny safe

from her father.

In conclusion, Jenny is the tragic protagonist of this upbeat happy movie. In an

otherwise uplifting story, Jenny’s life was one that was filled with multiple losses and

poor choices. But, as a viewer, you felt sympathy for her because Jenny only knew a

life of survival. She lost her mother at a young age, lived with an abusive father, and

didn’t know how to trust and love. Ultimately, Jenny was looking to survive, but she was
also wanting to be loved as much as she loved others. Movie viewers can empathize,

and ultimately sympathize with Jenny and the life that she lived as a tragic protagonist.

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