Why is the ending of Forrest Gump different from the novel?
I have read the book Forrest Gump and also watched the Forrest Gump movie version. In the movie version at the end of movie, Jenny told Forrest that she was suffering from HIV/AIDS virus then she proposes to him and he accepts but Jenny died at the end of the movie.
But in the novel, Forrest Gump, Jenny reunited with Gump and with their child and she didn't die in that novel.
Can someone explain to me why does the movie's ending differ from the novel?
Best Answer
I found a very interesting article based on the differences between movie and the novel. I'll quote some of them, that should answer your question:
Robert Zemeckis, director of Forrest Gump, chooses not to include several adventures that are present in the book and to change the character’s personality.
This significant changes play an important role in the viewer’s perspective of Forrest. Also he is described as a big, tall, and a really strong person while in the movie the viewer would describe him as an average man.
Jenny, and Forrest’s mother are the only two people that love Forrest the way he is. In the book, however, it seems as if Forrest’s mother doesn’t take him more than just an idiot. “How you gonna have a plan, Forrest?..You is a idiot. How is po idiot gonna have a plan?”(220)
In the movie Robert Zemeckis decides to change that and makes her more confident in her son’s mental skills. However, his mental impairment doesn’t seem to bother Jenny, the love of Forrest’s life, who’s feelings toward Forrest evolve differently in the movie compare to the book. The viewer of Forrest Gump doesn’t know her real feelings and might even think that the main character is the person to whom she runs for a comfort and a place to stay until she is strong enough to run away again. This change certainly changes the viewer’s perspective on Jenny’s personality.
So basically, the director chooses a different ending because he changed the character's personality; and in order to maintain consistency in this, it's not just the ending that has been changed, as you read the book you should know better than me: some scenes were added, some of them were cut off. All these changes have been made to make the movie more touching. So I quote the answer to your question:
However, the adjustments to the main heroes’s characters and the addition of several touching moments change the book into a heart breaking movie.
You can read the whole article here. Enjoy.
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How does Forrest Gump end in the book?
At the end of the book, Forrest ends up with Dan and a male orangutan named "Sue" living life by being a one-man band, begging for change, while sleeping on a green bench.Was Forrest Gump adapted from a book?
The book: Like the movie, Jenny is Forrest's main squeeze. But he doesn't marry her. Jenny happily marries Donald, an assistant sales manager for a roofing business. She loves Forrest, but he's not dependable.Did Jenny and Forrest get married in the book?
Forrest Gump is based on a book that's even stranger than the movie. As fun as it is to imagine that a kindly man with strong opinions about boxes of chocolate left his mark on virtually every aspect of U.S. history between the early 1950s and the mid-1990s, Forrest Gump unfortunately has no real-life counterpart.Forrest Gump - Book vs. Movie
More answers regarding why is the ending of Forrest Gump different from the novel?
Answer 2
Very few books are the same as the movie. Most receive a rewrite from an unrelated writer with creative license brought in to do the screen play. Some like Holes or Perks of Being a Wallflower has had their screenplay written by the authors themselves so their story line does not change as much.
Sources: Stack Exchange - This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Exchange and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
Images: George Milton, Plato Terentev, Enric Cruz López, Karolina Grabowska