Searching the literature abroad, we have found that there have been a quite large number of criticisms and comments on this film, among which most are positive critical reviews. Some influential and well-known criticisms and comments abroad will be reviewed here．

Roger Ebert of Chicago Sun-Times (July 6, 1994) wrote, “I’ve never met anyone like Forrest Gump in a movie before, and for that matter I’ve never seen a movie quite like Forrest Gump. Any attempt to describe him will take a risk to make the movie look more conventional than it is, but let me try. It’s a comedy, I guess.”

Of course, negative criticisms and reviews can be found in foreign literature. For example, Fred Bruning (1994) in his essay “The self-hypnosis of America” comments that the film Forrest Gump is a sly and subversive Hollywood undertaking that gives a false impression of life. Fred makes a fierce attack on American optimism in general and gives a suggestion that the movie reveals nothing about the world of intellectual handicaps and asks why Americans adore Forrest Gump. To conclude, whatever opinions the critics hold, the researches of Forrest Gump have already been fruitful and colorful.

2.3 Studies in China on Forrest Gump

Enjoying the same great popularity in China, Forrest Gump receives the same high praises from Chinese commentators, and furthermore, many people have maintained great interest in it ever since the film’s release. Therefore, with fruitful results the Chinese academic circles have witnessed that not only the number of the published papers on it is increasing greater and greater but also research contents involve various aspects of the film and research visions vary with different researches of Forrest Gump can be roughly classified into four big categories. The following sub-section will illustrate them one by one.

Li Yiming (1997) highly praises the film Forrest Gump as contemporary American culture classics. Wang Min (2009) holds the same opinion that viewing this film from the cultural perspective can help us get to know American key values, the mainstream culture and marginal culture.

Zhang Ying (2005) in the paper “Viewing Modern American Inpidual Values through the Film Gump Forrest” demonstrates that the inpidual values in modern America have been changed with the development of politics, economics and culture so that Gump Forrest plays a role that is depicted as an “idol of common people style”. In the film, Gump has experienced a series of historic big events, and moreover, his striving spirit has stood out through his experiences.

Symbolism in literature showed up in mid 19th century in France. Symbols are those things that have even deeper meaning than what it appears to be. Symbolism is the use of symbols to represent something with the purpose to express the writer’s highly complex feelings．

Liu Bokang (2010) makes an interpretation on the symbols such as Gump’s spirit, flouting feather, magical running and chocolates, and then explores the implication of symbolism. From another perspective, Li Ping(2009)makes a study on the symbolism that appears respectively in the film Shawshank Redemption and in the film Forrest Gump in order to get to know American values.

Just as mentioned in the first chapter, one important factor that makes Forrest Gump so popular is its successfully-used language and classic characters’ lines, which attracted more attention from Chinese researchers who have done a number of studies from language point.

The first relevant paper may be “The Secret of Success--Analysis of Forest Gump’s Language” by Yan Junrong. Yan (2000) believes that Language, which governs people’s way of thinking and behavior, in nature, is metaphorical, while that of Forest Gump, the hero of the film Forest Gump, is not. Yan points out that Gump, with lower-than-average intelligence, is unique because of his peculiar language system, which affects his way of thinking.