Forrest Gump opens and closes with the image of a white feather floating through the air. In the opening, it comes to rest in Forrest's suitcase. At the end, it flies back up into the air, helping to symbolize the cycle that has now been completed—specifically, the cycle of life and death, and one of new beginnings. After all, the movie ends with Forrest's son going off to his first day of school just like Forrest did at the beginning of the movie.

Okay, clear enough. But, let's dig a little deeper and think about just how that feather gets around. Does it have legs (with braces on them)? Is it on a hippie bus chugging toward California? A ship cruising toward Vietnam?

No, it has the wind, i.e., chance. That dancing feather has no clear destiny, no point where it's supposed to end up. It just is. In other words, it symbolizes Forrest's view of life rather than Lt. Dan's; there's no big destiny endgame we're all trying to achieve, there's just a random series of events knocking us about. As Mrs. Gump would say, "Life is like a floating feather. You never know where it's going to end up." And, as Jenny sings in the nudie bar, the answer to all of life's big questions is just "blowin' in the wind."

We don't even have to dig very deep to come up with this since Forrest says it straight out: "I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we're all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze."

The only problem is that we can't ever be quite sure whether this movie is rocking out to chance or destiny. Maybe Lt. Dan did have a destiny; he was just mixed up about what it was. And, maybe all of Forrest's random good luck is part of his overall destiny to marry Jenny and end up with Forrest Jr. and millions of dollars. (Sign us up!)

O Beautiful for Spacious Skies

OK, now it really is time to dig a little deeper. If you can remember all the way back to your American history class, you probably heard a little phrase called "Manifest Destiny," the idea that the United States was fated to occupy the continent from sea to shining sea, and anyone who didn't agree had better get out of the way.

We're not saying that Forrest Gump is explicitly grappling with the idea of Manifest Destiny. What we're suggesting is that the idea of "fate" and "destiny" is a major part of the American consciousness—that maybe America has always thought of itself as destined to be a great world power and wanted to be a beacon of democracy and a light to all nations, and so on and so forth.

We're also suggesting that Forrest Gump is explicitly grappling with the idea of America and the American dream, which is why Forrest is constantly meeting presidents and finding himself in the middle of major world events.

So, one question that little white feather makes us ask is this: is American history a product of fate and destiny? Did we have to go over to Vietnam, and were the countercultural '60s always going to happen, and was the spread of AIDS inevitable?

Or, could the breeze have pushed us elsewhere just as easily?