Forrest Gump
WINSTON GROOM
Level 3
Retold by John Escott
Series Editors: Andy Hopkins and Jocelyn Potter
Pearson Education Limited
Edinburgh Gate, Harlow,
Essex CM20 2JE, England
and Associated Companies throughout the world.
ISBN 0 582 41781 3
First published in Great Britain by Black Swan 1994
This adaptation first published by Penguin Books 1996
Published by Addison Wesley Longman Limited and Penguin Books Ltd. 1998
New edition first published 1999
7 9 10 8
Text copyright ©John Escott 1996
Illustrations copyright © David Cuzik (Pennant Illustration Agency) 1996
All rights reserved
The moral right of the adapter and of the illustrator has been asserted
Typeset by Refine Catch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
Set in ll/14pt Monotype Bembo
Printed in Spain by Mateu Cromo, S. A. Pinto (Madrid)
All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the
prior written permission of the Publishers.
Published by Pearson Education Limited in association with
Penguin Books Ltd., both companies being subsidiaries of Pearson Plc
For a complet list of titles available in the Penguin Readers series please write to your local
Pearson Education office or contact: Penguin Readers Marketing Department,
Pearson Education, Edinburgh Gate, Harlow, Essex, CM20 2JE
Contents
page
Introduction iv
Chapter 1 School and Football 1
Chapter 2 Life at University 4
Chapter 3 The Big Game 7
Chapter 4 Vietnam 10
Chapter 5 Danger in the Jungle 12
Chapter 6 The White House 17
Chapter 7 Meeting Jenny Again 22
Chapter 8 Into Space 25
Chapter 9 A Real Idiot 28
Chapter 10 Money for Playing Games 32
Chapter 11 The Shrimp Business 35
Chapter 12 Little Forrest 38
Activities 42
Introduction
One day when Curtis had to change a wheel on the car, I helped him.
‘If you’re an idiot,’ he said angrily, ‘how do you know how to do that?’
‘Maybe I am an idiot,’ I said, ‘but ‘I’m not stupid.’
I was born an idiot, but ‘I’m cleverer than most people think.
We quickly realize this is true in this wonderfully warm and
funny story about Forrest Gump, a good-hearted young man
from Alabama in the USA. He wins a medal for being very brave in
the Vietnam war and meets the President of the United States of
America. He becomes a footballer, a film star, a businessman and he
goes into space. And his best friend is an ape called Sue!
Forrest Gump is now a film, with Tom Hanks and Sally Field in it.
Tom Hanks won an Oscar for the film in 1994. In its first eighteen
days, the film of Forrest Gump took $100 million in American
cinemas — more than any other film that Paramount Pictures has
made before. Forrest Gump is an unusual man who does a lot of
unusual things. Millions of ordinary Americans liked the film. They
felt Forrest Gump’s story was also partly a story about themselves
and about America from the 1960s to today. Forrest Gump lived
the ‘American Dream’. It doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor, you
can be anything you want to be.
Winston Groom’s other books are Better Times Than These,
about the war in Vietnam, and As Summers Die. He lives for some
of the time in New York City and for the rest of the time in Clear
Point, Alabama.
iv
Chapter 1 School and Football
I was born an idiot ņ but I’m cleverer than people think. I can think
things OK, but when I have to say them or write them down,
sometimes they come out all wrong. When I was born, my Mom
named me Forrest. My daddy died just after I was born. He worked
on the ships. One day a big box of bananas fell down on my daddy
and killed him.
I don’t like bananas much. Only banana cake. I like that all right.
At first when I was growing up, I played with everybody. But
then some boys hit me, and my Mom didn’t want me to play with
them again. I tried to play with girls, but they all ran away from me.
I went to an ordinary school for a year. Then the children started
laughing and running away from me. But one girl, Jenny Curran,
didn’t run away, and sometimes she walked home with me. She was
nice.
Then they put me into another kind of school, and there were
some strange boys there. Some couldn’t eat or go to the toilet
without help. I stayed in that school for five or six years. But when I
was thirteen, I grew six inches in six months! And by the time I was
sixteen, I was bigger and heavier than all the other boys in the
school.
One day I was walking home, and a car stopped next to me. The
driver asked me my name, and I told him. ‘What school do you go
to?’ he asked.
I told him about the idiot school.
‘Do you ever play football?’ he asked.
‘No,’ I told him. ‘I see other people playing, but I don’t play and
they never ask me to play with them.’
‘OK,’ the man said.
Three days later, the man in the car came and got me out of
1
school. Mom was there, and they got all the things out of my desk
and put them in a brown paper bag. Then they told me to say
goodbye to the teacher.
The man in the car took me and Mom to the new high school.
There, an old man with grey hair asked me lots of questions. But I
knew that they really wanted me to play football. The man in the car
was a football coach called Fellers. Coach Fellers asked me to put on
a football suit, then asked me to undress and dress again, twenty
times, until I could do it easily.
I began to play football with the high school team, and Coach
Fellers helped me. And I went to lessons in the school. One teacher,
Miss Henderson, was really nice. She taught me to read. And who
do you think I saw in the school cafe? Jenny Curran! She was all
grown-up now, with pretty black hair, long legs, and a beautiful face.
I went and sat with her, and she remembered me!
But there was a boy in the cafe who started calling me names, and
saying things like, ‘How’s Stupid?’. Then he threw some milk at me,
and I jumped out of my chair and ran away. A day or two later, after
school in the afternoon, he and his friends came up to me and
started pushing and hitting me. Then they ran after me across the
football field. I ran away fast!
I saw that Coach Fellers was watching me. He had a strange look
on his face, and he came and told me to put on my football suit.
That afternoon, he gave me the ball to run with. The others started
running after me, and I ran as fast as I could. When they caught me,
it needed eight of them to pull me down! Coach Fellers was really
happy! He started jumping up and down and laughing. And after
that, everybody liked me.
We had our first game, and I was frightened. But they gave me
the ball, and I ran over the goal line two or three times. People were
really kind to me after that!
Then something happened which was not so good.
‘I want to take Jenny Curran to the cinema,’ I told Mom one day.
2
Then he threw some milk at me, and I jumped out
of my chair and ran away.
So she phoned Jenny’s Mom and explained. Next evening, Jenny
arrived at our house, wearing a white dress, and with a pink flower
in her hair. She was the prettiest thing that I ever saw.
The cinema was not far from our house. Jenny got the tickets,
and we went inside. The film was about a man and a woman,
Bonnie and Clyde, and there was a lot of shooting and killing. Well,
I laughed a lot. But when I did this, people looked at me, and Jenny
got down lower and lower in her place. Once I thought she was on
the floor, and I put my hand on her shoulder to pull her up. But I
pulled her dress, and it came open, and she screamed.
I tried to put my hands in front of her, because there were people
looking at us. Then two men came and took me to an office. A few
minutes later, four policemen arrived, and took me to the police
station!
Mom came to the police station. She was crying, and I knew that
I was in trouble again. And I was in trouble, but I was lucky. Next
day, a letter arrived from a university. It was good news: if I played
in their football team, there was a place for me in school there.
And the police said, ‘That’s OK with us. Just get out of town!’
So the next morning, Mom put some things into a suitcase for
me, and put me on a bus. She was crying again. But they started the
bus, and away I went.
Chapter 2 Life at University
When we got to the university, Coach Bryant came to talk to us.
‘Last man to get to the practice field will get a ride there on my
shoe!’ he shouted at us. And he meant it when he said that kind of
thing. We soon learned that.
The building that I went to live in was nice on the outside but
not on the inside. Most of the doors and windows were broken, and
the floor was dirty. I lived in a room with a man called Curtis. He
4
crashed into the room with a wild look in his eyes. He wasn’t very
tall, but he was very strong. ‘Where are you from?’ he asked.
‘Mobile,’ I told him.
‘That’s a stupid town!’ he said.
And that was all of our conversation for several days.
On the practice field, things didn’t start very well. I got the ball,
but I ran the wrong way with it, and everybody got angry and
started shouting at me.
But Coach Bryant called me across. ‘Just get in the line and start
catching the ball,’ he told me.
And then I told him something that he didn’t want to hear.
‘They never taught me to catch a ball at high school,’ I said. ‘It
was difficult enough for me just to remember where our goal line
was.’
I don’t think he was very pleased. But he started to teach me to
catch.
I wanted my Mom, and I wanted to go home. I didn’t like that
place.
And Curtis was always angry, and I couldn’t understand him. He
had a car, and sometimes he gave me a ride to the practice field. But
one day when he had to change a wheel on the car, I helped him.
‘If you’re an idiot,’ he said, angrily, ‘how do you know how to
do that?’
‘Maybe I am an idiot,’ I said, ‘but I’m not stupid.’
Then Curtis ran after me, and called me all kinds of terrible
names.
After that, I moved my bed to another room.
Ƈ
The first football game was on Saturday. I ran well, and we won 35
to 3. Everybody was pleased with me. I phoned Mom to tell her.
‘I heard the game on the radio!’ she said. ‘I was so happy, I
wanted to cry!’
5
That night, everybody went to parties, but nobody asked me to
go. I went back to my room, but I heard music from somewhere
upstairs. I found a young man who was sitting in his room playing
the harmonica.
His name was Bubba. He broke his foot in football practice and
couldn’t play in the game. I sat and listened to him. We didn’t talk,
but after about an hour, I asked, ‘Can I try it?’ and he said ‘OK’, and
gave me the harmonica. I began to play.
After several minutes, Bubba was getting really excited and
saying, ‘Good, good, good!’ Then he asked, ‘Where did you learn
to play like that?’
‘I didn’t learn anywhere,’ I said.
When it got late, he told me to take the harmonica with me, and
I played it for a long time in my room.
I found a young man who was sitting in his room
playing the harmonica.
6
Next day I took it back to Bubba.
‘Keep it,’ he said. ‘I’ve got another one.’
I was really happy, and I went and sat under a tree and played all
day.
It was late afternoon when I began to walk back to my room.
Suddenly, I heard a voice shout, ‘Forrest!’ I turned round ņ and saw
Jenny!
She had a big smile on her face, and she held my hand.
‘I saw you play football yesterday,’ she said. ‘You were
wonderful!’
She wasn’t angry about the cinema, and she asked me to have a
drink with her!
‘I’m taking lessons in music, and I want to be a singer,’ she told
me. ‘I play in a little group. We’re playing at the Students’ Centre
tomorrow night. Why don’t you come and listen?’
‘OK,’ I said.
Chapter 3 The Big Game
On Friday night, I went to the Students’ Centre. There were a lot of
people there, and Jenny was wearing a long dress and singing. Three
or four other people were in the group with her, and they made a
good sound. Jenny saw me and smiled, and I sat on the floor and
listened. It was wonderful.
They played for about an hour, and I was lying back with my
eyes closed, listening happily. How did it happen? I’m not sure. But
suddenly I found that I was playing my harmonica with them!
Jenny stopped singing for a second or two, and the others in the
group stopped playing. Then Jenny laughed and began to sing with
my harmonica, and then everybody was saying ‘Wonderful!’ to me.
Jenny came to see me. ‘Forrest, where did you learn to play that
thing?’
7
‘I didn’t learn anywhere,’ I told her.
Well, after that, Jenny asked me to play with their group every
Friday, and paid me $25 every time!
Ƈ
The only other important thing that happened to me at the uni-
versity was the Big Game at the Orange Bowl in Miami that year. It
was an important game which Coach Bryant wanted us to win.
The game started, and the ball came to me. I took it ņ and ran
straight into a group of big men on the other team! Crash! It was
like that all afternoon.
When they were winning 28 to 7, Coach Bryant called me
across. ‘Forrest,’ he said, ‘all year we have secretly taught you to
catch the ball and run with it. Now you’re going to run like a wild
animal. OK?’
‘OK, Coach,’ I said.
And I did. Everybody was surprised to see that I could catch the
ball. Suddenly it was 28 to 14! And after I caught it four or five
more times, it was 28 to 21. Then the other team got two men to
run after me. But that meant Gwinn was free to catch the ball, and
he put us on the 15-yard line. Then Weasel, the kicker, got a field
goal, and it was 28 to 24!
But then things began to go wrong again. Weasel made a bad
mistake ņ and then the game finished, and we were the losers.
Coach Bryant wasn’t very happy. ‘Well, boys,’ he said, ‘there’s
always next year.’
But not for me. I soon learned that.
Ƈ
I couldn’t stay at the university. I wasn’t clever enough at the
lessons, and there was nothing that anybody could do about it.
Coach Bryant was very sad.
‘I knew this would happen, Forrest,’ he said. ‘But I said to them.
8
I took it ņ and ran straight into a group of big men
on the other team!
“Just give me that boy in my team for a year!”, and they did. And
we had a good year ņ the best year, Forrest! Good luck, boy!’
Bubba helped me to put my things in my suitcase, then he
walked to the bus with me to say goodbye. We went past the
Students’ Centre. But it wasn’t Friday night, and Jenny’s band
wasn’t playing. I didn’t know where she was.
It was late when the bus got to Mobile. Mom knew that I was
coming, but she was crying when I got home.
‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.
‘A letter came,’ she cried. ‘You’ve got to go in the army!’
Chapter 4 Vietnam
After I left the idiot school, people were always shouting at me ņ
Coach Fellers, Coach Bryant, and then the people in the army. But
I have to say this: the people in the army shouted louder and longer
than anybody!
Fort Benning was in Georgia. After about a hundred hours on a
bus, me and a lot of other new young soldiers arrived there. The
place where I had to live was just a bit better than the rooms at the
university, but the food was not. It was terrible.
Then, and in the months to come, I just had to do the things that
I was told to do. They taught me how to shoot guns, throw hand
grenades, and move along the ground on my stomach.
One day, the cook was ill, and somebody said, ‘Gump, you’re
going to be the cook today.’
‘What am I going to cook?’ I said. ‘How do I cook?’
‘It’s easy,’ said one of the men. ‘Just put everything that you see
in the food cupboard into a big pot and cook it.’
‘Maybe it won’t taste very good,’ I said.
‘Nothing does in this place!’ he said. He was right.
Well, I got tins of tomatoes, some rice, apples, potatoes, and
10
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