While this speaks well of the shrewd marketing executives at Paramount Studios circa the early 1990s, it does not well compliment the moral compass of the American moviegoer. For it is not difficult to conjure another infamous filmic lummox of arguably superior moral character than the favored Gump. Regardless, in the cinematic retard continuum, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre's Leatherface is a more moral character than Forrest Gump. First, it is important to understand that the measure of morality is not simply a mathematical aggregate of positive deeds over the negative. Nor is it determined by good done in fear of punishment for having done otherwise, as the prominent political parties and religious organizations frequently infer.
Morality is choice.
An individual moral act is one in which a person decides of their own free will to choose a specific path in spite of personal consequences because they believe it is the right thing to do by others. It is a greater moral good, in fact, to make such a choice when the dire nature of the personal consequences is known and feared and yet faced anyway. By this pure definition, Forrest Gump is strictly amoral. Simply obeying one's mother may lead one to perform good deeds, but even so in such a case it is then the mother carrying the weight of moral decision and not the congenitally lobotomized offspring. Looking at the two individuals' choices, one must agree that their actions are equitable in their divorce from personal responsibility and morality.