Introduction
Jenny is the feminine character from “Forest Gump”, Forests’ first real friend from when they were children. She is very affectionate as a child, defending Forest, encouraging him (being famous for the famous expression, which entered the popular culture – “Run, Forest, run!”), and even teaching him to read, as he was a slower learner than she was. Jenny has no physical defects but she deals with far more complex problems, because she lacks the parental protection and love. On the contrary, she is repeatedly abused by her father, and this causes severe damages in her future development as a grown up. Each time she finds herself in trouble, she has Forrest, her school friend, to take care of her, rescuing her from the multiple messes that she gets herself into. Forrest is the only man who truly, unconditionally loves Jenny, seeing in her the little girl who encouraged him to run, when he was bullied by his class mates, an innocent, but very troubled soul. She does not want Forrest to save her from herself, and she rejects his helping hand. This rejection can be associated with her fear of commitment. She is an emotional instable individual, not being able to possess long lasting feelings for other human beings, putting herself always in complex, dangerous situations. It seems that Jenny does not want to evolve, to integrate in the society. She wants to escape this world, as she feels that she does not belong in it, having severe behavioral and adaptability problems. She is always in the wrong places, with the wrong people.
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Jenny’s character reflects an involution of human personality throughout the movie. As a little girl, she is deeply scared by the brutal treatment of her father. Being sexually abused by her father, transforms her in a person who is incapable of developing strong and long lasting loving feelings for another human being. Jenny’s destiny is futile, as she is unable to design a plan for her own personal growth. She is a wandering creature, with no purpose and no desire to accomplish something in her life. Her character starts to evolve towards the end of the movie, when she reaches the end of her life.
Personality is based on a hierarchy of traits, inherited through genes (Eysenck in (Ryckman, 2008)). Jenny inherited some patterns of her father's inadaptability to social standards. The dynamic traits influence the personality through the variations of extraversion-introversion. Jenny is an introverted, and her hysteric and anti-social behavior expresses her inner feelings that she is unable to express differently. Being based on heritability, the trait theory plays a significant role in the growth and development of an individual. This theory shows how much has Jenny inherited from her parents traits. This component explores the extreme scores on trait dimensions, such as neuroticism (Pervin, Cervone, John, 2005).
Assessing Jenny's traits by her behavior and her actions, she appears like a maladaptive person, suffering from an emotional distress. The trait theory affects the personality development, but the environmental factors are also influencing it. Jenny's personality was influenced both by the traits inherited from her parents, and by the external factors.
Upton (2009) notes that character traits represent a species of disposition, wherein dispositions reflect the input/output functions that account for the stimulus – response relation. Because the individual traits of a person are the image of that person’s conduct, disposition indicates how the person is likely to behave. Allport considers that dispositions are different from one person to another, hence the term of personal dispositions (Carducci, 2009).
In terms of disposition, Jenny manifests an imbalanced behavior. She is a maladapted individual, developing aptitudes for anti-social conduct, as she joins a group of “hippies” and sustains their demonstrations, interacts with drug dealers, and she herself becomes a drug addict. Her early childhood trauma seriously impacted her, because all she does is to run and to hide, fearing she will be abused again and again. She finds herself trapped in little, transient, phony, and inconsistent happiness. However, this is only the image of a hysteric, insecure character, presenting soft sociopathic traits.
Being like a leave in the wind, Jenny goes where the wind takes her, having no goal established, no purpose to follow. She engages in various actions, joins many groups, but in fact she cannot find herself as she cannot break away from her childhood traumas, when she was repeatedly molested, verbally, physically and sexually by her father. In terms of culture, although she is talented, as she plays guitar, she puts herself in degrading and humiliating positions, playing folk music naked in a club for drunk men who despise her, treating her like a prostitute. She is unaware of herself and of her qualities and she cannot consciously develop from a cultural point of view.
Jenny’s cognitive processes are slow. As a child she proved to be a slow learner, but she shared the little knowledge that she had with her childhood friend, Forrest, whom she taught how to read. She learning Forrest how to read, standing up for him when he was bullied, offering a seat next to her when all the other children in the bus where rejecting him, demonstrate her emotional capacity to care for somebody else and it denotes her altruistic personality.
According to Maslow’s humanistic holistic personality theory approach, people develop needs that are arranged on a hierarchy until reaching the psychological health or the self - actualization and for moving from one level to another, the lower level must be satisfied (Burger, 2008). Applying this theory on Jenny, there can be observed that this character could not move to superior needs, because she did not satisfied the lower level needs. She remained trapped to her fears of knowing herself, constantly abusing herself, as a continuation of the abuses that she dealt with in her childhood. She cannot reach self – actualization, because she cannot escape the past. She wanders around between the primary needs (food, shelter and protection guaranteed by Forrest), afraid and mistrustful of achieving the love and respect of others, because she does not have these feelings for herself.
On the other hand, according to Carl Rogers’ theory of fully functioning person, such a person lives in the present, embracing every moment of the current existence, feeling secured about oneself, congruent with the decisions made, aware of her emotions and confident in her instincts, does not rely to past or antecedent living (Rogers, 1995).
Whoever saw “Forrest Gump” can tell that Jenny was definitely not that person. Although she seemed to be living in the present, grouping with the hippies and permanently in the middle of the action, Jenny was a person caught in the past, fighting the ghost of her childhood that was hunting her present and future. Her instincts were mostly wrong and she did not manifest a positive tendency towards her existence, but repulsion and blame.
Conclusion
This essay developed the character analysis for a fictional character, Jenny from “Forrest Gump”. This character was analyzed from various perspectives: developmental, trait, behavioral, disposition, her goals, culture and environmental context were evaluated, as well as the emotional/cognitive processes, for determining her personality. Learning that although she seemed extroverted, involving herself in various activities, she was in fact introverted, hiding her fears of being abused by illogically putting herself in danger. The humanistic holistic approach to personality developed by Abraham Maslow explains how Jenny remained in the primary needs level category, as she cannot gain her self-respect, being unable to determine others to respect her, therefore, impossible to reaching the self-actualization specific to this theory. Carl Rogers’ fully functioning theory that challenges Maslow’s self – efficacy theory perceives fully functioning persons as people living in the present, not entrenched in their past, totally aware of their decisions, their instincts and of the way they choose to live the moment. Although Jenny seemed to be all these, she was deeply caught in the past, which was haunting her present, threatening her future and damning her soul.
References
Burger, J., M. (2008) Personality. Belmont: Thomson Wadsworth.
Carducci, B., J. (2009) The psychology of personality: viewpoints, research and applications. West Sussex: Blackwell Publishing.
Pervin, L. A., Cervone, D., & John, O. P. (2005). Theories of personality. New York: Wiley.
Ryckman, R. M. (2008) Theories of personality. (9th ed.) Belmont: Thomson Wadsworth.
Rogers, C. (1995) On becoming a person: a therapist’s view of psychotherapy. New York: Houghton Mifflin.Upton, C., L. (2009) Situational traits of character. Plymouth: Lexington Books.
