Forrest Gump Essay - the Driven Life

Like any other students of my age, I have a great ambition. I dream of using my studies for the society and for myself, and sometimes I dream of achieving things that nobody was able to achieve before. Although this ambition is something that drives me forward in my life, it is also a thing that makes me very agitated when things go out of my hand. Yet sometimes I do feel that I want to put everything to destiny, and instead of being anxious about what will happen in the future, just think of it as a box of chocolate.

Forrest Gump, both in the movie and in the book, looked at the world with the extreme optimism. In fact, his whole life is filled with luck. He has achieved many things that awes the audience / readers, but most of them are not intended by him. Even after his achievement, Forrest either does not realize the importance of his work or sometimes does not realize his achievement at all. Although this makes the whole story funny and heartwarming, because it is so unrealistic, Forrest did not made me jealous. Although his achievements are something that I would like to achieve in my life, I also know that the time one really feels good about achieving something is not when the achievement itself is a great thing, but when one has spent time and effort in planning and working for the achievement.

In that aspect, it was not his achievement but his love that made a big impression in the story. Ironically, it was one thing that Forrest did not achieve fully in his life, and it was one of the few things that he craved in his life. Although his time with Jenny was short and incomplete, through his love with Jenny Forrest was able to seek the meaning in his life. Although Jenny did hurt Forrest in many ways, she was also a motivation for Forrest and many deeds that Forrest did. She has made Forrest mature and grow, break the shell; hence when she left the world, Forrest could continue living with his son.

The story of Forrest is intriguing. However, it is not because Forrest has been living such a lucky life for a man with such a low IQ, nor is it because Forrest has been strikingly optimistic about everything in his life. It is because through the unrealistic story of Forrest we can see the reality, the reality where people are kept driven by their dream, no matter how many times they fail.

Linkin Park - What I've Done (Video) - YouTube

Linkin Park - What I've Done (Video) - YouTube: "http://youtu.be/pMePM9Q-bYk"

Just to share.

Completely Irrelevant to any of the class works.

Lord of the Flies

 
Who is the guiltiest?

When I read the book for the first time, without hesitating I would have answered Jack.

However, after reading the book again and watching the movie, I feel that he is not.

Jack's only sin was that he was weak, a coward. In the name of 'chief' he had hid his fear, drawn the line so that he can feel he is different.

When Jack did so the other boys joined so that they can be a tribe; that is how the children are. They must have sensed the same weakness that they all had,

the weakness that they did not want to show to anyone else.


 
The sin Ralph had was that he was too courageous. He could not understand that boys around him had the human instinct of fear in their heart.

Ralph would have been a good leader, if it were not a situation where the boys had to fear.

Eventually, Ralph was hated not because he was against the ideas of the others, not because he witnessed Piggy's death, but because he was the one who did not fear.

With the death of Piggy, the children wanted Ralph to have the same feeling as they did – the fear.

Then the children wanted Ralph away so that they will no longer have to compare themselves, and try to justify themselves.


 
Being courageous is a good quality, a heroic quality.

However, a person cannot be blamed for not being a hero.

Not every person is born a lion; sometimes you are a zebra, or a monkey.

Of course, killing Piggy and Simon due to their childish fear may have been wrong.

However, when you are in a herd of zebra chased by a lion,

you cannot help secretly hoping that a crippled, a youngster, anyone weaker than you, to be caught by the lion

so that you may run safely.

Perhaps you may intentionally leave them behind so that they will earn you some more time.

But should a zebra be called guilty of the others' death?


 
The boys had to face a lion made of their mistakes and fear; they needed to run from it.

So who is the guiltiest? The lion.

Where the Wild things Are

I read the original book when I was young. Back then, I never liked the book because I could not stand the thought of leaving home and joining the monsters.

I guess I was a normal, 'good' kid back then.

Ironically, I could understand Max when I reached the age of 'adult'.

Nowadays I am anxious to leave the safe environment; the safe boundary of school and home. 

I feel that I can be a 'king' in the world of my own.

In fact, when I talk with my friends, I know that I am not the only one to think so.

As 19, I am at the verge of adulthood and childhood.

It is the strange age, a taboo, which belongs to neither side.

In school and home, people expect me to be an adult and a child at the same time.

Sometimes I feel that I myself am the 'wild thing', coming out of an egg.

Sometimes I feel that becoming an adult is getting rid of that 'wild thing'.

 

'Where the wild things are' is the place of adults that can only be understood by the children.

The things there act more like children then the adults.

They fight for ridiculous reasons, and their emotions are unpredictable.

However, although as adults people look down on such attitudes, such actions may be how the world truly is.

When I think of my childhood, it was not always filled with pink bunnies and sweet marshmallows;

I did not have the strength to control myself, and I went through the emotions of loneliness and sadness, emotions that were much deeper and greater than the ones I feel now.

Sometimes I felt jealousy; sometimes I felt hatred.

Reasons for feeling those emotions maybe childish, but these emotions became a basis for how I view and live the world.

I still have those emotions in my life; they are changing into different forms, as max's monsters will change into the monsters he will face in the real world.

The movie 'where the wild things are' is not exactly for children, nor for adults.

I myself am not exactly a child, nor an adult.

As a child, I hated the book. I know that as an adult, I would not have wasted my time watching this movie.

Yet I, the 19 year old I, enjoyed this movie. (At least partly)

Perhaps this is the only time I will.

Shawshank Redemption

From the start, people go through an institution. They are born in a hospital, which is an institution, go through kindergarten, grade school, university, spend a lot of time in a company and eventually dies in a sanctuary. Often, a religious institution would follow as an option.

Even Andy came from the institution – the bank. He probably was institutionalized in there, considering the fact that he was not caring enough to make his wife make an affair with someone else.

Andy became free when he was in prison. As ironical as it may sound, Andy realized how to be free in the place where freedom exist the least, what it meant to be institutionalized. If Andy did not go to prison in the first place, Andy would have never noticed how institutionalized he was – even if he did, he would have been satisfied with it, because that is what people call success. Adapting to the system, to survive and reside in the system is the common notion for a comfortable, successful life. Perhaps Andy realized this from the 19 years of imprisonment. He may have thought he was an honest, hardworking banker, but he could not even save his own life, let alone his wife’s.

I have been living in an institution for just about the time Andy spent in the prison. As much as people realize there is something wrong with the education system, with the irrational suicide rate and growing rate of crime committed by the students, people also know that the successful students are those who still adapted to the system and move on to the very similar system in the society. Often there are students, like Andy, who try to break away from it, but unlike Andy, who were so free in the place without any past memories, those students often have to be branded with the word ‘troublesome’.

They say it is the reality, and we have to live with it. As the warden told Andy. “Perhaps the whole society is institutionalized, yes, but that how you run the society” is what we hear all the time. Perhaps it is time we get some Rita Hayworth on our high wall.  

Spider Man

ACT III

10. The Road Back: Peter Parker feels guilty after his friend, Harry, decides to revenge Spider-man whom Harry wrongly believes to have killed his father. Harry doesn't know Peter is Spider Man, so he tells his plan of revenge to Peter, making Peter feel guilty.

11. Resurrection: Despite what had happened, Peter decides to leave as the hero and flies through the city, catching criminal and working as the hero.

12. Return With the Elixir: Peter is able to keep the peace of the city - at least for this story. 

Verge 2

I can't get rid of the feeling that I am writing twilight without romance and vampires and pretty boys... :(

******************************************************************************

The Curtis was supposed to be the normal, happy family. Mr. Curtis was an ex-soldier, participated in Iraq War, winning several medals. Mrs. Curtis was an ex- insurance saleswoman, but she quit the job when her sons were born. The two boys, Bryan and Benedict, were O.K. Bryan, who played soccer in his high school, was tall and healthy, easy-go-happy young man who got several As with some Bs, attending a decent college to become a science teacher. Except for a fact that he had no will to go to WestPoint which was Mr. Curtis’ lifelong dream, Bryan was a proud son of the family. Benedict’s case, the younger of the boys, was a little different. Benedict was smart, really smart. The thing was that Benedict just didn’t care for the things he wasn’t interested.

Benedict’s knowledge of the world was enormous, diverse and deep in every field of study. Yet at school, Benedict didn’t care about the human relationship, never understood why he should be in time or study for tests. Benedict would know all about the things taught in the school and more, but his scores were all Ds and Fs mostly because he would skip classes reading books or not answer to the questions on the tests, thinking it’s a waste of a time.

“The school’s supposed to teach! I learn nothing in that class.”

Benedict would complain at home, and despite Bryan’s effort to explain about all the human relationships he can get at school, how school can be a fun place and how with Benedict’s intelligence will lead him to be a valedictorian within a day if he’d just try, Benedict never understood, and finally dropped out before his freshman year ended. He got bored of everything too soon. More he learned, faster he got bored. His only permanent interest was poetry, and Benedict spent time at home reading all the poetries he could find from the libraries and internet, driving Mr. Curtis mad.

Except for a few troubles, Curtis’ was a happy home, and Eva was heading to their home to see Bryan. Bryan was coming home that day, and being Bryan, he was in charge of listening to everybody’s trouble and happiness. He had a good relationship with Scotts, their next-door neighbor. In fact, he had a good relationship with everyone. Eva needed someone to listen to her, and it wasn’t definitely someone at home or school. With her human relationship, Bryan was the only man.

“He’d better be home by now.”

Eva mumbled, afraid that Bryan may not be home yet. Eva heard about Bryan’s little brother, a psycho who got kicked out of school two years ago because he was too crazy. If he had not been, he would have been in the same grade with Eva. Emily would go on about the probably exaggerated episodes about how Benedict was the world’s weirdest freak, all the episodes about how he had put eyeballs into Microwaves and would inject medicines to his own body in order to test them, and so on and so on.

“Maybe he’s weirder than you,” Emily would say.

Eva never cared for the stories back then, but the sudden fear of meeting a supposedly crazy guy seemed undesirable.