The book, as you might imagine, is very different from the movie. In the book Forrest demonstrates his savant capabilities in the following ways, to name a few:
- His chess skills are out-of-this-world
- His ping-pong capabilities over-shadow most
- He can wrestle like none you've ever seen
- He's the best dang quarterback in the region
- He's a natural master physician and mathematician
However the movie hardly illustrates much more than ping-pong and rifle assembly/dis-assembly. Here are a few more differences. In the book...
- Mama nor Jenny pass away
- Lieutenant Dan doesn't help start the "s'rimpin bidness"
- There is no wedding and no Lieutenant Dan with shiny new legs
- Forrest wins $10,000 in wrestling
- Forrest auditions for a Hollywood movie
- Forrest goes to space in a rocket (and New Guinea as a result)
- Forrest has a male orangutan named Sue
- Forrest runs for senate with the slogan, "I gotta pee!"
I'll stop there but at this point you may be asking yourself, "So what DO they have in common?" For the most part, you'll have to read it. However, they do share themes. Innocence, seeing the world through eyes of another, courage, sheer luck and the hard lesson of life and death. The joy of reading this book was well worth the shock of variation between itself and the movie based upon it. I know you'll enjoy an almost entirely different tale of Forrest Gump as I did when you're tangled in the pages, unable to set it down.
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