Forest Gump is a great movie, definitely one of my favorites, but after reading the Byers article, it's a little screwed up. I never thought a movie could rewrite history in order to make it seem like America was never a place of conflict and there was always a clear right and wrong. Watching the movie you can tell that they are showing that if you are a good kid and do everything the "right" way, you will be happy in the end. Vice versa, if you make poor choices and attempt to cause conflict, you will have to pay the price.
This movie has so much content in it, but I think the scene that best illustrates the idea of the good vs. bad choices is the end of the movie when Jenny dies. She has payed the ultimate price for poor decisions and Forest, although losing the woman he has loved almost his entire life, is left to raise his son, to do better than his own father did. Forest, after choosing the "right" path is left with a wonderful son and a potentially great, happy life.

I think this idea of good things happen to those who make the right decisions is a little contradictory in the movie. "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get." Is that really true? If you're good, you know to some extent that something good will happen to you. Vice versa if you're bad. Also now, many boxes of chocolate have a type of map provided to tell you exactly what it is that you're getting. Yes bad things happened to Forest, but they were always followed by something that was good, that almost made it better. He always knew, what he was going to get.
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