New Year's: The Lesson of Lieutenant Dan

Hope in the 2025 from Forrest Gump

“Don’t you just love New Year’s? You get to start all over. Everybody gets a second chance.” Those were the words spoken by Long-Limbs Lenore to Forrest Gump as they watched the Times Square ball drop.

Unfortunately for many, New Year’s Eve serves as a poignant reminder of another bygone year. Broken dreams, people lost, miseries juxtaposed against the hopes and celebrations that shine even brighter against their own darkness.

A few New Year’s ago, at a high school party, I had a buddy drive off to a dock and take his own life. I don’t think life had gone quite as he’d hoped, and in the midst of the festivities, he felt more hopeless by contrast. And every New Year’s for the rest of my life I’ll remember him.

I don’t think that feeling of misplaced despair has ever been more exemplified than by Forrest Gump’s New Year’s scene. Lieutenant Dan was a man of fate, believing he was destined to die in Vietnam, following in the footsteps of every man in his family in every major American conflict. And after Forrest Gump rescued him from the battlefield, he was robbed of that fate, his purpose for being. So where is he now? Suffering the tragic life of many men who returned home from Vietnam, vilified by the country he went to die for. Alcoholic. Depressed. Homeless. Crippled. And worst of all, stripped from his destiny.

And as the kazoos and cheers rage on, he sits beneath the crowd wallowing, his hair coated with confetti.

Lieutenant Dan attempts to satisfy himself with earthly pleasures of booze and prostitutes, though when they insult Forrest’s intelligence, he defends his friend. And when the prostitutes leave, as he falls from his wheelchair face-first against the floor, they call him a cripple freak.

In this moment, we see the character of Dan. As Forrest attempts to help him once more, he shrugs him off, wrestling himself back into the wheelchair. He denies Forrest’s help, because after all, Forrest’s help had put him here in the first place.

This strength of Dan’s character, however, guides his transformation. Despite his anger, his aimlessness, he is still that moral, principled man. And when Forrest truly becomes a shrimp boat captain, he has no other choice than to be his first mate. Why? Because, as Dan says, “I’m a man of my word.”

Dan has not changed. He has merely embarked on the journey, teasing a different destiny. But when their shrimping escapades fail, he taunts Forrest, asking, “Where the hell’s this God of yours?”

Well, God reared his head. While they’re at sea, a torrential storm strikes the ship and Dan, no stranger to the storm, screams at God, demanding more chaos, enraged at his fate. And as the storm passes, the true metaphorical genius of the film takes hold. Forrest and Dan, in the only ship at sea, retained the only sailable ship. They didn’t harbor, they endured the storm. And so they could reap the reward. As Forrest says, “After that, shrimping was easy.”

In the aftermath, Dan begins to see a reason for his pain. He begins to appreciate his extended life. And finally, he thanks Forrest for saving his life. He jumps into the Gulf, swimming, renewed in an almost Baptismal spirit. Forrest concluded that little episode perfectly. “I think he made his peace with God.”

The next time we see Dan, he arrives at Forrest and Jenny’s wedding, walking once more. Titanium legs. A new destiny. A new life. A wife. He’s smiling, grateful, no longer mourning the path he once thought was his. He adjusted to the circumstance and transcended himself, he battled through the storm, and he came out better on the other end. And having himself gone through crooked legs, Forrest calls them Dan’s magic legs.

The final shot we see of Lieutenant Dan contrasts perfectly the beginning of his journey. At Forrest’s wedding, instead of that New Year’s sitting beneath the crowd alone, Dan is the only man standing, watching the man who saved his life, with his hand on his wife’s shoulder.

Each new year is a new sunrise, a new light. And though you may be trapped in a storm, just know there’s a future your mind won’t let you imagine waiting on the other side. If you stay true to your character, if you can appreciate the storm, if you can give yourself some grace. If a man despondent and beaten and hopeless as Lieutenant Dan can turn it around, so can you.

Your fate is not something written in the stars, but something you write.

Have a Happy New Year. See you in 2025.