Abstract:
This study encapsulates Robert Zemeckis’ movie ‘Forrest Gump’ (1994) as a
portrayal of the transgression of the existential crisis of being a mentally retarded
persona through unfathomable desire. The unfathomable desire of Gump has
undertaken him with a plethora of possibilities which locates him as a phenomenon
as a mere individual. As a Qualitative study, the study focusses on the movie ‘Forrest
Gump’ (1994) with theoretical interpretations of Jacques Lacan, Sigmund Freud and
Martin Heidegger. In data analysis, the researcher employed a literary analysis with
selected theories of desire. Gump desires to travel to a novice existential composition
and locate himself in a new disposition beyond the physical and psychological
differentiations. This desire implanted by his mother, Jenny with different incidents
in American history upsized his existential realm to a new spatiality deviated from
his identity as a man with a lower IQ level. Parallel to this desire, his oddity serves
to upsize scathing criticisms on the coeval discourse. Gump’s individuality remained
constant in many circumstances where his individual success amalgamated by means
of being different from all character portrayals that conform themselves to accepted
identity formations. Gump’s successful surpassing of his physical and psychological
differentiations through irreversible desire offers him countless possibilities to relate
his self to the society.
