Centerpiece Symbols: ‘Forrest Gump’ and the Moral Crisis of Sanity, and Madness in 21st Century
Last year while reading the classic novel by Miguel De Cervantes, my fingers would turn pages, and with each page turned my mind would constantly have a partial thought of something related to it. There would be a weary uneasiness in me, while wading through the over 1000-page long drama, I would fail a lot in recalling a piece of art that made me feel similar to the feeling that Don-Quixote gave to me. It went on and on till I completed the book, The Nausea that Jean Paul Sartre in his Post-war Philosophical fiction (Novel) describes is how I would describe my not knowing what other thing is that feels almost identical to ‘Don Quixote’. I moved on to the next literature piece and the feeling stayed there, Buried and would often pop up but always in different contexts, I don’t think it ever dies…
Not long ago, I rewatched Forrest Gump. It broke me. Again. A great piece of art makes you feel some way, It makes you embrace time. This sense of confusing feeling was not as maddening as I had felt while I was reading ‘Don Quixote’ Instead this toleration to coincide, felt easy. Forrest Gump makes me feel the same way ‘Don Quixote’ does. The revelation was terrifyingly normal, Just like a revelation in a Murakami Book. It’s not decaudation of a particular time period when two same feelings coincide. Enjoying both of these pieces of art takes a toll on me, that’s what is similar between them, Sanity and Madness… It throws you into a crisis, It suddenly becomes a moral crisis.
“When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Forrest Gump was released in 1994, During the end of the Great 20th Century. Maybe it’s so loyal with its time that one cannot ignore this moral crisis while watching this, in the 21st century, The century that has just started and it’s dark, There is unethical and boring gossip. The internet world is filled with an abundance of uneducated emotional violence, In the age of Post-Modern Contemporary Art, I think it’s hard to get away from this moral crisis. And the dilemma of the film can be put adjacent to the novel ‘Don Quixote’, one putting all major historical and Pop-cultural references of the 20th century in it and one being considered founding work of modern western literature.
Forrest Gump, makes me feel grateful and at the same time scary of being a human. The greatest arguments in my psychology class have always been, “No person residing in society is ever Mad. There is no mad, ever.” A tiring Hypothesis (Often clapped, often looked upon). Don Quixote was considered mad Because the idea that an individual can be right while society is wrong was considered radical during that time, while Forrest Gump was considered mad because his IQ was down below the average. The dichotomy of the definition of madness between these 2 characters is part Society, part Culture, and part Science.
“I’m not a Smart Man, But I know what love is”
Forrest Gump…
Every time that I’ve watched Forrest Gump, I’ve always realized and observed something new, and not in the sense of it is, more symbolically accurate or creating illicit metaphors, But observed in the sense of the real-life events that it tries itself to paralyze with. On my latest re-watch, I understood how the name ‘Forrest’ comes from one of his predecessors called ‘Forrest’ who was the leader of the Ku Klux Klan, (A organization that employed terror in pursuit of their white supremacist agenda) And another thing that I noticed was the most beautiful real-life parallel of the film, The John Lennon Scene, Where there is a rhythm in dialogues of dick and John which works as the lyrics of John Lennon’s notoriously beautiful song ‘Imagine’ and both of their dialogues are consequence to Forrest’s description of China.
“Some years later,that nice young man from England was on his way home to see his little boy and was signing some autographs. For no particular reason at all,somebody shot him.
(John Lennon was shot 4 times by Mark David Chapman, And having assassinated him, Mark sat there and read, J.D Salinger's novel ‘The Catcher in the Rye’)
Forrest Gump goes to college, earns medals for his country, serves for his country, Sends and receives love, The highlights go above him being a mad man, Forrest is a symbolic social commentary on Humans. Forrest walks above and ahead the barren autumnal tree, with his son, sits there on the bench. As the school bus arrives, Forrest promises his son that he’ll be there when the bus will drop him back…Feather just like Forrest’s innocence Flies up above the sky, …And Forrest Gump lives on and on and on…
