‘Cast Away’: What was in Tom Hanks’ FedEx package?
When it comes to films about being secluded on a deserted island with only your own thoughts and memories to keep you from going insane, Robert Zemeckis’ 2000 movie Cast Away dominates the market. Sure, it’s not exactly a saturated market, with only 1990’s Lord of the Flies and 2016’s The Red Turtle occupying the niche genre, but nonetheless, Cast Away is a quintessential classic of deserted island movies.
Starring Tom Hanks, the film tells the story of a FedEx executive named Chuck Noland, who goes through an emotional transformation after crash-landing on a deserted island and being forced to fend for himself for four years. Carrying the film with his own performance, Hanks rightfully received an Oscar nomination for ‘Best Leading Actor’, with much of the film’s action focusing on just him and his newfound friend, a volleyball named Wilson.
There’s something quietly devastating about the way Cast Away treats loneliness. Chuck doesn’t spiral into madness or rage; he just slowly rearranges his flailing mindset to fit the shape of his surroundings. The volleyball, Wilson, becomes more than a coping mechanism to the point that the little red-faced leather chap becomes a vital part of his life. When he’s lost at sea, Hanks delivers one of his most devastating scenes, which, in retrospect, is as raw as it is ridiculous.
What makes Chuck’s transformation more poignant, though, is how little fanfare the film gives it. There’s no montage, no eureka moment, no obnoxious Hollywood musical crescendo when he eventually figures out how to survive. He just gets thinner, quieter, and more capable. When he returns to the world, he’s not a hero, he’s a stranger. The life he fought so hard to return to has changed without him, and somehow, that’s a more brutal blow than anything nature threw his way.
And then there’s that bloody package. The one he never opens. With everything stripped away, his health, his hope, his sense of time, Chuck still clings to this one sealed box. It’s a masterstroke of restraint from Zemeckis. In a lesser film, the package would be some game-changing twist. Here, it’s something better: an object of quiet faith.
It was all something of a cruel twist of fate, really. While Hanks’ Chuck is on the beach, FedEx boxes wash up on the shore, reminding him of just how meaningless his old job was in comparison to his new ‘life or death’ situation. While he opens all the boxes that he sees, hoping to find useful tools, he leaves one that’s marked with an image of orange angel wings, refusing to open it as if it’s some sort of ethereal source of hope.
As the years pass, the package stays by Chuck’s side, with the protagonist even carrying it with him on his makeshift raft at the end of the movie. Floating on his wooden raft out to sea, eventually, he is saved by a passing container ship. To make a long story short, Chuck ends the film by returning the parcel to its original owner, though when no one answers the door, he simply leaves a note saying how integral the package was in saving his life.
So when Chuck finally delivers it, with no one to answer the door, and walks away, it’s not about closure. It’s about respect. For what kept him alive, for what he’ll never get back, and for whatever comes next. He doesn’t need to know what was inside. He just needed something to believe in when everything else fell apart.
So, what was in the package in Cast Away?
Considering the fact that Chuck never opened the package, fans of the movie have long theorised as to what was in the box, with many believing it was a satellite phone that would have been able to save his life far more quickly. Other theories point to the item in the box being something very similar that would have considerably helped his efforts, such as vegetable seeds or a GPS.
Although the protagonist doesn’t open the box in the movie, he does in the original script penned by William Broyles Jr, with this giving fans a definitive answer to the age-old question.
In the script, Chuck delicately opens the package after admiring the angel wings image, but finds nothing that would have helped him on the island. Instead, the box contains some rather mundane items; a letter and two jars of homemade salsa. “You said our life was a prison,” the letter reads: “Dull. Boring. Empty. I can’t begin to tell you how much that hurt. I don’t want to lose you. I’m enclosing some salsa, the verde you like. Use it on your sticky rice and think of home. Then come home—to me. We’ll find the spice in our lives again. Together. I love you. Always. Bettina”.
Therein lies the answer to the Cast Away mystery of ‘what’s in the package?’, with the letter relating to Chuck’s own hope of getting home and finding forgiveness.
