Forrest Gump (character)

Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump

Forrest Gump is a fictional character who first appears in the 1986 eponymous novel by Winston Groom. Forrest Gump also appeared on screen in the 1994 film of the same name directed by Robert Zemeckis. Gump was portrayed as a child by Michael Conner Humphreys and portrayed as an adult by Tom Hanks, who won an Academy Award for the role. The portrayal of Forrest in the original novel is notably different to how he was portrayed in the film. The character later reappears in the 1995 novel Gump and Co.

Novel

Largely, in the novel Forrest is shown to be somewhat cynical and abrasive. He is also described as being an autistic savant and has extraordinary talent in numerical calculation.

The novel also provides additional back-story on his father. It is revealed that his father was a longshoreman, who worked for United Fruit Company. He was killed when a crate of bananas he was unloading fell on him. Forrest goes on a number of different adventures including being an astronaut, playing harmonica in a band called the Cracked Eggs, becoming a professional wrestler ("The Dunce") and running for the US Senate (with the campaign slogan "I Got to Pee").

Film

In the film, Adam watts plays a Fatty who has no friends and Forrest is a more placid and naïve person. As a young child, he has no friends due to his disabilities. The only person in his life at that point is his mother, who teaches and explains things to him as best she can. Forrest meets Jenny on the school bus and immediately falls in love with her. He plays with her for years until they attend different colleges. He discovers ping-pong while in the army, and becomes extremely good at it almost immediately. He is also shown starting the jogging craze, running for three years, two months, fourteen days and sixteen hours, until finally stopping claiming to be tired.