Why does Forrest Gump say, “Life is like a box of chocolates”?
On a park bench next to a nondescript bus stop, the first shot of Robert Zemeckis’ 1994 film Forrest Gump introduces us to its titular character. Tom Hanks opens his mouth, and a guttural southern accent emerges. “Hello. My name’s Forrest, Forrest Gump,” he says to the nurse sitting next to him on the bench.
Hanks borrowed the accent from the young actor playing the child version of his character, who really did hail from the rural south of the United States. His version of it has become one of the most impersonated voices in movie history.
And it’s what Hanks’ character says next to the nurse with whom he’s sharing a bench that most people tend to impersonate. “My momma always said, life was like a box of chocolates.” The distinctive epigrammatic nature of the line and the slow, accentuated rhythm with which Hanks enunciates the phrase “box of chocolates” have made it highly quotable and instantly recognisable.
But why does Forrest Gump use the saying? What is it about boxes of chocolates that made a useful simile for life itself? And what point is he trying to make?
“You never know what you’re gonna get”
Gump says the line just after opening a selection box of chocolates himself and offering the box to the nurse. He proceeds to stuff his face with the sweets, telling her, “I could eat about a million and a half of these.”
He’s eating from a selection box, a type of chocolate containing an assortment of different types of chocolate bonbons in various shapes and flavours. Selection boxes were popularised by British chocolate makers Cadbury and Rowntree in the early 20th century and have since become a festive staple given as gifts to loved ones for Christmas and birthdays.
Gump’s mother used chocolate selection boxes as a microcosmic example of how life pans out since people often eat a particular chocolate from their box without realising what flavour they’re about to taste. It could be their favourite (strawberry creme) or an unsavoury disappointment (fudge nougat). In the end, though, to finish the entire box, they know they’re good to have to eat both the good and the bad. Much like the positive and negative life experiences all of us go through, many of which we aren’t anticipating. Yet life wouldn’t be what it is without them all.
As well as simply utterly a modern-day proverb, Hanks is setting us up for the rest of the movie, in which the naive and good-natured Gump experiences a series of extraordinary and unexpected events. No one watching Forrest Gump for the first time knows exactly what they’re in for. And so, Forrest’s most famous line doubles up as a simple axiom to take with us through life and a fitting framing device for the film itself.
