This movie details the friendship of two twelve-year-old boys who are different in many ways, but similar in the ways that matter most. Joe has been raised by his mother and grandmother, without knowing who his father is. His mother says that she will tell him when he is old enough to know. Because of this, Joe feels a little out of place in his town as a “bastard” child.
He is good friends with Simon Birch, who is very much out of place in the town but for a different reason. Simon is an extremely, abnormally small child, whose high pitched voice is at one point compared to mice. His parents are not at all affectionate towards him, and Simon is left very much to follow his own path. Joe’s mother becomes a second mother to Simon.
However, Simon is not embittered by the teasing of his fellow students and the patronizing attitudes of the adults in his life. He is actually a person very much alive and in love with life – he loves baseball, even though he is never given a real chance to play; he enjoys hanging out with Joe, swimming, racing, etc.; and most of all, he has a deep faith that God has a purpose for him, that he is destined to be a hero, to be God’s instrument. No one around him understands this conviction of his, not even Joe, and some people even feel threatened by Simon’s assurance, such as the unhappy Sunday school teacher at their church.
One day, Joe’s mother meets another man, with whom she begins to develop a serious relationship. Joe is very unhappy with this arrangement, even though the man (Ben) makes an effort to strike up a relationship with both Joe and Simon. He gives Joe a present of a stuffed armadillo. Joe doesn’t like Ben at first, but Simon does, and through Simon, Joe slowly begins to draw closer to Ben as a potential father.
Then one fateful day, Joe and Simon’s baseball team is being badly beaten by a rival team. The coach, wanting to get it over with quickly, sends out Simon to bat. Usually when he does this, he tells Simon not to swing at all, because Simon’s strike zone is so small that he will easily be walked by the pitcher. But this time, wanting Simon to strike out, he encourages Simon to swing. Simon eagerly follows his advice and hits a foul ball, which flies over the fence and strikes Joe’s mother in the head just as she is walking by. She is killed instantly.
Her death comes as a terrible blow to both Simon and Joe. Simon makes an effort to reach out to Joe and apologize, which Joe accepts. However, when Simon tries to talk about himself as God’s instrument, Joe gets angry, insisting that there is no God and no purpose – that his mother’s death was just an accident.
Joe’s grandmother tells him that once she is gone, there will be no one left to look after him. Joe now becomes determined to find out who his father is. He and Simon speculate, and decide that their gym teacher is a likely candidate. They decide to break into his office in order to look for proof – the baseball that killed Joe’s mother, which has disappeared since the incident. They succeed in breaking in, but, although they find a baseball, it turns out not to be the one. Joe, in anger and sadness, throws the ball through the window of the office, and they are discovered. The police chief assigns them community service – they must volunteer at the church’s Christmas retreat. At first the boys dislike this arrangement, but Simon becomes glad to go once he discovers that there is a small boy who is afraid to go – Simon promises him that he will be on the retreat to help him.
In the meantime, Simon is cast as the baby Jesus in the upcoming church pageant. The Reverend, who is already exasperated with Simon for his constant references to himself as God’s instrument and for his disruption of the Reverend’s sermons, confiscates Simon’s baseball card collection, promising to return it if Simon agrees to be the baby Jesus and does not mess up the pageant. Unfortunately, Simon’s attraction to Marjorie, the girl playing Mary, causes a disturbance that disrupts the entire play during its performance. As a result, the Reverend forbids Simon to go on the retreat and also refuses to return his baseball card collection.
The day of the retreat arrives, and Joe, the Reverend, and the grade 3 boys head out in a bus for a day of skating. Simon decides to break into the Reverend’s office and recover his cards, but when he does so, he discovers the baseball that killed Joe’s mother. Meanwhile, the Reverend, moved by the plight of Joe, who feels like an outsider because he is a “bastard”, reveals to Joe that he is his father just as Simon and Ben arrive with news of Simon’s discovery. Joe is dismayed at the news and wishes he hadn’t found out.
On the trip back in the bus, Simon rides with Joe to keep him company. A deer scampers out into the road, causing the bus to swerve and tumble down a hill into a lake. The Reverend is knocked unconscious and the bus driver, afraid for his own life, leaps out and abandons the boys. Simon, however, takes charge, and helps Joe get all of the boys and the Reverend out of the sinking bus. However, the bus floats away with Simon and one boy still stuck on it. Ben and Joe swim after it and rescue the boys.
Simon, however, is brought out unconscious, and he dies later on in the hospital. He is now talked about as a hero in the town, just as he always said he would be. Joe is eventually adopted by Ben, as he chooses Ben as his “real” father over the Reverend, his biological father. The movie ends where it began – with the adult Joe at the grave of Simon, praying for his friend. Then Joe gets into his car with his son (named Simon) and they drive off.
Analysis
Simon is a child who is convinced that he has a destiny, that God has a plan for him. Simon feels that, somehow, he will be a hero, God’s instrument. Those around him are puzzled by his declaration – even Joe doesn’t quite know what to make of it. Worse, however, are the reactions of people like the Reverend and the Sunday school teacher, people who ought to be reinforcing this basic insight. The teacher, herself a very unhappy woman, finds herself threatened by Simon’s confidence and takes it out on Simon. The reason for her unhappiness and her insecurity are pointed out by Joe’s mother – Simon has more faith than the teacher will ever have.
Simon also appears to have more faith than the Reverend. The Reverend is also a clearly unhappy man, although we don’t find the main reason for this until later on in the movie. At one point, Simon finds his own faith weakening, and he begs the Reverend to tell him that God has a purpose and a plan for everyone. The Reverend finds himself unable to provide this assurance – clearly, he himself is not convinced of it, and so it becomes impossible for him to have that conviction about Simon either.
Ultimately, the movie centres on the themes of fatherhood and faith – and the two are deeply connected. Both Joe and Simon come from families where they lack the love of a father. In Joe’s case, his father is completely unknown to him. In Simon’s, his father couldn’t care less about him, even calling him a “screw-up” at one point. However, Simon does not lack a father – God functions for him as a father, as the one who is in charge and has a plan.
Another father in the movie, the Reverend, fails in his function as a spiritual father precisely because he has failed in his function as a biological one. His failure to support Joe until it is much too late has left him embittered and pained, and as a result he lacks the same confidence in God’s purpose that Simon has. As a result, the Reverend is unable to provide the fatherly spiritual guidance that Simon asks for.
Much of the movie consists in Joe’s search for his father, because of the need he feels to know who his father is. Near the end of the movie, after Joe has learned that the Reverend is his father, Joe suggests to Simon that “Maybe this was your destiny – to help me find my father.” Simon does not seem convinced, but the statement is indeed true, not only in the way that Joe meant it (ie, Joe learning that the Reverend is his biological father), but also in two other, more important ways – Simon helps Joe to discover a true father in Ben, and the truest of fathers in God.
In the first case, it is Simon’s affection for Ben that helps open Joe up to the possibility of Ben as a real father. Ben is extremely kind to the boys, not patronizing them. At the end of the movie, Joe credits Simon with being the one who helped bring about his affection for Ben. As a result, Simon’s help in finding Joe’s biological father ends up also helping Joe find his “real” father, i.e, the father who is willing to love his son.
In addition, Joe also credits Simon with bringing about his faith in God – at the very beginning of the movie, the adult Joe insists that the main reason he will remember Simon is not because of all the incidents in their lives, but because it is on account of Simon that Joe believes in God. At one point, Joe and Simon are talking about Simon’s faith in God’s plan for him, and Joe asks Simon what proof he has for his belief. Simon replies, “I don’t need proof – I’ve got faith. That’s your problem – you don’t have faith.” Joe’s answer is crucial: “I got faith. I just want proof to back it up”
Joe cannot believe in God’s providence like Simon can without having some proof. Thus, when tragedy strikes, Joe’s response is to disbelieve in God and adhere to the belief that everything is chance. This can be a falsely comforting temptation, especially in times of hardship, because it helps to explain the hardest question of all – why me? Why did this bad thing have to happen to me?
However, Simon helps Joe to understand that God does indeed have a plan, but it isn’t always one that is easily understood. Neither Simon nor Joe could have known how things would turn out, how Simon would indeed become a hero, how Joe would find both his faith and a father through his interaction with Simon. Simon’s faith thus expresses a deep truth – there is purpose behind everything, even the most tragic incidents, and that purpose is in the hands of a loving Father.
In this way, Simon himself becomes the proof that Joe wanted, the proof that God exists and has a plan. The Reverend and the Sunday school teacher cannot even conceive that God might have created Simon small for a purpose – they see in Simon’s smallness a deformity that Simon must overcome by having faith in spite of his condition. But Simon is wiser than they are – he doesn’t believe that he needs to fulfill his destiny in spite of his conditions, but that he was given these conditions precisely as the means to fulfilling his destiny. We can see in this a deep truth about our own lives – our personalities, our friends, our family, our situation, even the things we don’t like about our lives, are not given to us as obstacles to jump over, but as the very path that God wants us to take to fulfill our destiny. This is the deep truth that Simon teaches Joe, and teaches us.
Thus, at the end of the day, Simon’s faith is proven true – he does become a hero. One aspect of his heroism, of course, is the way in which he helped to save the children trapped in the sinking bus. He willingly risked, and ultimately gave up, his life for theirs – a truly heroic act. But if we look at how he is able to perform such an act of heroism, we will see that his status as hero actually runs even deeper.
Simon firmly believes that he was created to achieve great things – what these are exactly, he doesn’t know, but he is convinced that he will do something great. It is because of this faith that he becomes capable of actually achieving great things – of overcoming the teasing and patronizing of others, of helping Joe cope with his mother’s death, of helping Joe to fulfill his hope of finding his father, and, ultimately, of giving his life to save others. We can learn a deep lesson here – it is precisely because Simon knows he has been created for great things that he becomes capable of actually achieving great things. This is the great truth that comes from knowing God is our Father, the insight to which Simon leads Joe. If we are created by a loving Father for a purpose, then we are destined to be heroes in some way or another. Our confidence in this can make us bold enough, like Simon, to actually undertake heroic things, big or small.
On the other hand, the Reverend has a much narrower outlook, because he is not convinced that God has a plan. As a result, he finds it hard to believe that anyone, himself included, is meant to achieve great things. This then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy – if we believe that there is no purpose, no reason to why we are here, and if we refuse to believe that God has created us for heroic deeds, then we will never achieve anything lasting or great. Our lives will instead be mediocre and without purpose. But with God’s providence as our motivation, we know that we can strive for greater things, as Simon teaches us.
Questions for Discussion
1. What does this movie tell us about fatherhood and the importance of a father’s love?
2. What does this movie tell us about faith and the importance of believing in God’s providence? Joe demands proof before he will have faith. Is this a healthy attitude? Why do you think Simon is able to have faith without having any proof?
3. Simon is convinced that God has a purpose for him, and as a result he believes that he is capable of great things. This means that life for him has very broad horizons, and there is potential joy in even the little things in life, like stuffed armadillos and baseball cards. Do you think his insight is correct? And if it is, what difference do you think his insight can have in our lives?
4. The Reverend tells Simon that it is good to have faith despite Simon’s deformed condition. But Simon seems to have faith precisely because of his condition – in other words, he is convinced that his so-called “deformity” is actually meant by God for a purpose. What everyone else sees as a burden, Simon sees as an opportunity given to him by God. What do you think about his belief? Reflect on the conditions in your own life, even those things that most frustrate you. Do you look at these things as obstacles or as opportunities? What difference could it make to look at everything that happens as an expression of the love of a Father?
Simon Birch. (1998). The Movie Database (TMDb). https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/18937-simon-birch
