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Forrest Gump Research Paper

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Forrest Gump’s Emotional Dumps In the movie, Forrest Gump, Tom Hanks plays an intellectually handicapped man named Forrest Gump from Greenbow, Alabama. The majority of the movie took place through his recounting of his memories from early childhood all the way up to his current age. This paper looks at Forrest’s ability to communicate, his diligence in a relationship, ability to cope, and his self-perception. Communication Needs Work Interpersonal communication is an interactional process in which one person sends a message to another. To be an effective communicator you must be good at both speaking and listening. (Weiten, Dunn, and Hammer, 2016, p. 221) Forrest excelled at listening, but struggled with speaking. In particular, he lacked …show more content…

Even though he didn’t have a large quantity of friends, he did have high quality friends. Those friendships prospered because of the things he did for them. Relationship maintenance involves the actions and activities used to sustain the desired quality of a relationship. (Weiten et al., 2016, p. 257) These actions include being positive, open, assuring, and doing joint activities. Agnew and VanderDrift showed that these actions can be used to promote interdependence and stability or can protect a relationship from threat. (Weiten et al., 2016, p. 257) The relationship that he worked on the most was with Jenny. Every time he got the chance he spent time with her and told her about the important things going on in his life. When Jenny left for D.C. Forrest showed her how much he cared for her. He gave Jenny the Medal of Honor that he had just received, and he said, “I got it just by doing what you told me to do.” (Zemeckis, 1994) Forrest had to deal with problems in his relationship with Jenny on a regular basis. Every time a problem would arise within the relationship he would try his best to work it out. He adjusted well when relationship problems arose. Unhealthy Coping His coping style, to say the least, was counterproductive. Coping refers to efforts to master, reduce, or tolerate the

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