Inspiring the transition from self-comforter to self-server in fiction, part 2
The story arc of Jenny in "Forrest Gump" and inspiring such change through fiction
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In part 1, we saw that the self-comforter or sensuality pattern of behavior is a cruel irony, that the wanton indulgence pleasure ultimately leads to the annihilation of pleasure, if not also one’s life. Such are the natural consequences of over-indulgence that lead one to consider another path.
An excellent depiction of not only this transition moment but the overall struggle of a self-comforter is the character Jenny in the movie Forrest Gump. We first meet Jenny as a child (played by Hanna Hall) on a school bus when she invites Forrest (played in childhood by Michael Conner Humphreys) to sit next to her after everyone else rejects him. Although her act demonstrates a kind heart, consider two facts: first, she’s also sitting alone; second she and Forrest become best friends immediately thereafter. Together, these facts suggests that she, too, is something of a friendless pariah. As such, her reaching out to Forrest primarily originates from the desire of a self-comforter for solace.
Indeed, in one scene she takes Forrest’s hand and asks him to stay with her a little longer. The adult Forrest, doing a voiceover, says, “For some reason Jenny didn’t ever want to go home.” We soon learn that her mother died young and that her drunken father sexually abuses her and her sisters. More than anything, Jenny wants to escape that pain. In a scene where Forrest comes to her house because she didn’t show up for school, she hides with Forrest in her father’s fields and prays intently, “Dear God, make me a bird so I can fly far, far, far away from here.” (And, as Forrest’s narrates, her prayer is answered when the police remove her from her father and take her to live with her grandmother.)
As an adult (played by Robin Wright), we see Jenny winding up in one abusive relationship after another and also engaging in substance abuse until she hits rock bottom. While high on drugs, gets very close to committing suicide by jumping off a balcony, a reflection of the prayer of her youth to be a bird so that she could fly.
In the video clip, notice how cinematographer Don Burgess uses a cold color palette that visually drains the life out of Jenny, making her look almost like a zombie. And notice the very apt selection of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird as the scene’s background music and specifically those measures that sing, “And this bird you cannot change…Lord knows I can’t change.” Jenny, who wanted to be a bird to fly away, almost takes that leap to end her life in utter failure. But she pulls herself back from the brink and realizes that something does need to change.
We next see Jenny returning to her hometown to be with Forrest (played as an adult by Tom Hanks). They enjoy a sweet reunion, leading to a moment when Forrest proposes to his one and only love:
Forrest: Will you marry me? I’d make a good husband, Jenny.
Jenny [looking pitiful and reluctant]: You would, Forrest.
Forrest: But you won’t marry me.
Jenny: You don’t want to marry me.
Forrest: Why don’t you love me, Jenny?
[Jenny gives no answer and looks aside.]
Forrest: I’m not a smart man, but I know what love is. [He walks out.]
She knows he loves her—he always has and shows no interest in anyone else—and deep down she knows she loves him. What she understands about herself, though, and what Forrest misinterprets, is that she doesn’t know what true love is. She knows she’d make a lousy wife because she doesn’t know how to love another, let alone herself.
And here is where I think Jenny has a revelation that we can infer from what happens next. Jenny comes to Forrest that night and makes love to him—she understands at least that much—and is even able to say, “I love you.” But, knowing that she’s not yet able to trust her love, she departs before he awakens the next morning without any kind of note or indication of where she might be. I think she now wants to be able to trust herself, a definite attribute of the transition to self-server, and wants to achieve that trust on her own without depending on Forrest’s unconditional faith in her.
Two years later, while Forrest is running back and forth across the United States because he “just felt like running” and has no idea of Jenny’s whereabouts, we see her working productively as a waitress: clearly, she’s left behind both substance abuse and toxic relationships. And after another four or five years, she’s not only become a nurse but is also raising her precocious son, also named Forrest, in a lovely apartment in Savannah, Georgia.
It’s revealed also that the child’s father is Forrest himself, and this fact speaks volumes. Given all her free-love relationships earlier in the movie, Jenny clearly understands birth control. Her getting pregnant by Forrest through a single act of intercourse thus means that she intended to have a child by him.
That, I believe, is her revelation: that by caring for a child, especially Forrest’s child, she would learn how to love another and thus trust herself to be worthy of Forrest. This is when she reaches out to Forrest and invites him to visit, during which time she asks him to marry her.
Sadly—for the characters and audience alike—Jenny soon dies of the AIDS virus, likely contracted sometime in her previous life through shared needles. It’s a heartbreaking moment. Yet her last words to him, just before she dies, are a fully sincere “I love you.” Considering what she’s come through, those simple words bring to closure a life that must be deemed a victorious one.
Inspiring the upward transition to self-server through fiction
Like Jenny, many people are able to escape the tragic conclusion of the sensualist’s story arc. Whether through rehab, religion, relationship, and/or simply reaching a point of complete disgust, they resolve to clean up their acts, no matter what it takes.
Taking steps like those of Jenny leads one to manifest a higher level of energy as demonstrated by taking care of oneself, finding gainful employment, taking responsibility, integrating with the mainstream (as opposed to underground) culture, and perhaps even beginning to accrue possessions and a more permanent home to put them in. Thus, one makes the transition to the self-server pattern, which is again, as our directional spiritual diagram indicates, an upwards step toward God.1
Fiction can inspire readers in the self-comforter pattern to consider such a transition for themselves by placing suitably sympathetic and relatable characters in that dilemma of the ever-receding target of sensual satisfaction. (Cases of motivational and/or inpletional inspiration as discussed in The nature of inspiration, part 1.) When readers identify with such depictions, they say, “Oh yeah, I’ve been there. I know exactly what that’s like and I’ve been equally disillusioned. It’s just that I don’t know what else to try.”
An author, working with any number of themes along the lines of “Searching for fulfillment through sensuality is doomed to failure,” can then propose alternatives that readers might not have considered. In fiction, an author makes such proposals not through explicitly “telling” but by “showing”: throwing characters into situations (like Jenny’s suicidal despair) that force them to choose between clinging to their old ways, with their attendant sufferings or death, and taking a chance on finding a greater fulfillment in the higher approach of the self-server pattern.2
In Jenny’s case (as shown in the video below), she finds the strength to admit, “I was messed up,” and, in the end, chooses to accept Forrest’s love, which has been there from the beginning.
To be clear, “self-server” doesn’t necessarily mean “selfish”; it simply means that “taking care” of oneself is the priority. That “care” can manifest in many different ways, from health to wealth to self-respect to cultivating meaningful relationships.
In a heroic or growth arc like Jenny’s, the protagonist chooses to change and realizes a happy ending of greater fulfillment, thereby inspiring/motivating the reader to consider such choices for themselves that can lead to similar outcomes.
In a tragic arc, the protagonist chooses not to change and suffers all the more, giving the reader a clear warning that also inspires/motivates them to consider different choices. In the tragic arc, the positive alternative must of course be made visible to the reader: perhaps through a secondary character who escapes the tragic fate of the protagonist or even through a brief scene in which the protagonist sees the possibility, as lived in another, but rejects it.
Having not personally been drawn to read (or write) stories meant for self-comforters, I can’t offer any further examples beyond Jenny’s in Forrest Gump. I did, however, find some lists of novels dealing with addiction on a couple of recovery center websites, such as americanaddictioncenters.org and orchidrecoverycenter.com. I also found that providing a detailed description of possible stories to an AI chatbot reveals possible titles, but I can’t make recommendations having not read any of them. If you know of any such novels or short stories, do drop them in the comments.
Closing notes: reveling, degrading, and redemptive stories
In this post we’ve talked about stories meant to inspire self-comforters upwards toward God by making a transition to the level of a self-server. But many stories don’t intend to uplift at all. Instead, they merely revel (or wallow) in the same behavioral pattern as the target reader. This is a case of confirmational (if not emotional) inspiration rather than motivational inspiration.
Where self-comforters are concerned, such stories aim to stimulate the senses and reinforce the self-comforter worldview. The protagonists in such stories likely enjoy sense indulgences without having to face consequences that would force them to make choices. All manners of “erotic,” which is to say, pornographic, fiction does precisely this.
It’s also possible for a story to drag readers below their current level by depicting that pattern as hopeless nonsense and thus encouraging a downward transition. Of course, at the self-comforter level there isn’t anywhere to go except into self-annihilation, but it’s entirely possible to write stories that nudge readers toward suicide.
There is another story arc to consider: redemption. Redemption is a type of heroic arc that implies a protagonist who has temporarily fallen from a higher state—their real default behavioral pattern—into a lower one and now wishes to reclaim their former position. Many such stories center on a self-server who falls to the level of a self-comforter and is then redeemed, as we’ll see in the next series of posts.
In the case of Jenny in Forrest Gump, however, her story is not redemptive because she’s never known anything other than the self-comforter pattern. Hers is truly heroic, a growth arc, really, in which she is making new discoveries about herself.
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This is true even if one engages in what could still be highly questionable behavior, such as exploiting addicts for personal profit. But we’ll pick up that thread when we explore the transition between self-server and self-sacrificer.
Notice that I said greater fulfillment, but that doesn’t imply complete fulfillment, because the fulfillments of the self-server are not wholly satisfying either.