Family Analysis Media Review
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape
!Set in a small dead-end town in the early 1990s, Gilbert Grape, a young
man forced to grow up to fast, faces the challenges of being the caregiver for his
family. This is not your typical American family which makes Gilbert’s job at
home difficult and frustrating. His family consists of his Mama, an obese widow
who is unable to move off the living room couch. There is Arnie who is Gilbert’s
young brother, Arnie is 17 years old living with a metal disability. There is also
Gilbert’s sisters, Amy, the oldest, and Ellen, a 15 year old dramatic teenage girl.
Their father is not present due to his suicide years ago. This leaves Gilbert to be
the man of the house. Each character has unique personalities and each has
their positive and negative qualities that they bring to the family. The main focus
of this movie is how Gilbert and the rest of his family work through situations with
Arnie’s disability, Mama’s obesity problem, and Ellen’s behavior problems.
Although Arnie has a clear mental disability, each member of this family has their
own disability.
!Arnie Grape is a young man living with a mental disability. Arnie shows
signs of autism but the specific disability is not confirmed. Some things you see
Arnie doing is flicking his nose, walking awkwardly, speaking out at inappropriate
times, climbing trees or even the town water tower, having break downs where
he yells and hits himself, and mimicking what others say or do.
!The family lives in a very small town in Iowa where the community seems
to be very tight and everybody knows everybody. The community knows Arnie
has a disability and that Gilbert is the one that takes care of him. The town
seems almost be annoyed by the family and the problems that Arnie sometimes
causes and judges them for not having the proper parents to take care of them.
When Arnie is found on top of the town water tower, the towns people gather
around and watch as Gilbert tries to get Arnie to come down. You hear a man
say, “here we go again”. This is evidence that the town is familiar with Arnie’s
disability and problems but are not a support system to the family. On the other
hand, there are some people throughout the town that are accepting and willing
to help out the family to make their life a little bit easier. One example to show
this is that the owner of the grocery store where Gilbert works, allows Arnie to sit
at the grocery store while Gilbert works.
!Since the movie begins with Arnie at the age of 17, you don’t see how the
families initial reaction was to finding out that he had a disability. If I had to make
an assumption, Arnie having a disability and the mother being obese, MIGHT of
led to the father’s suicide but I can’t know for sure. The lack of a father, a mother
!Lindsay Blakey
