In the great movie What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, directed by Lasse Hallstrom, there is a great variety of things eating Gilbert. Gilbert is a young man who feels as if the weight of the world is on his shoulders and feels trapped in a life he can’t escape, no matter how hard he tries. All of Gilbert’s emotional problems are the effects of his mother, she is an overweight-depressed woman who puts a lot of guilt, anger, and sadness on Gilbert, which in return makes Gilbert feel despair, pressured, depressed, and trapped. Gilbert loves his mom, but she’s too much for him. Since Gilbert is the man of the house it’s up to him to take care of his family, which is a lot of pressure. At one point in the film Gilbert says, “I wanna be a good person.” This quote shows how much pressure Gilbert puts on himself to be a good person for his family. Gilbert’s family relies on him for so much and Gilbert does all he can to provide do to provide everything they want. All of the pressure of being relied on is a lot and starts to show up in his …show more content…
day-to-day life. Another effect Gilbert’s mom has on him is the feeling of despair.
Gilbert has to buy the food and other supplies for the house. He has a job at a tiny grocery store, but another grocery store is stealing all their customers. Gilbert has the feeling of despair because of this. He’s finding it hard to make ends meet. He doesn’t feel like he’ll have a job for too much longer. During the film Gilbert says, “Something going on at Foodland? Oh, I don’t know, sir. I don’t shop there. I’d rather die.” This quote shows how the other grocery store is making it tough on Gilbert. Even though Gilbert is trying to stretch out every penny he has it’s hard to when he has to feed five people, including himself. He not only has to buy food, he also has to buy supplies to fix the house. The house is in bad shape too; the foundation is falling apart, the paints peeling off, and floor is about ready to bust. All of these costs add up and Gilbert feels
it. Another thing, Gilbert is a depressed man, and it has to do a lot with his mom. Gilbert feels he doesn’t have a mother. In the beginning of the film Gilbert makes that quite clear by saying, “Tucker, she’s a whale.” The fact that he sees his mom as a whale describes how he really doesn’t feel she’s his mom. Which is hard for him because he needs someone to help him with his emotions and problems.That’s what mom’s are for, but Gilbert is cheated out of that, and he knows it. This feeling of not really having a mother depresses Gilbert. He wants something he’ll never have, and it takes a lot out of him. Last but not least, Gilbert feels trapped. Gilbert wants to start a new life in a new town but can’t because of his mother. He is responsible for keeping his family safe and keeping food on the table. If he left his family would fall apart, so he doesn’t. Everyday when he wakes up in Endora makes Gilbert feel more and more trapped. In the beginning of the film Gilbert says, “Describing Endora is like dancing with no music.” Gilbert feels that there’s nothing good for him in Endora. He wants something, somewhere else, but can’t leave because of the effect it will have on his family. Moms are very important to their children. When a child lack a mother-child relationship it can have many emotionally negative affects on them. A great example of this is Gilbert Grape's life.
In Rose 's essay he gives personal examples of his own life, in this case it’s his mother who works in a diner. “I couldn 't put into words when I was growing up, but what I
The Grapes is a dysfunctional family who is living in the underprivileged rural area. The household consists of mother, Bonnie Grapes, who is a 54 year old jobless widow; Amy Grapes, the 34 year old eldest daughter among children, who is also still unemployed; Gilbert Grapes, the 24 year old eldest son who works at a nearby grocery shop; Arnie Grape, the younger brother of Gilbert Grapes who is autistic; and Ellen Grape, the youngest child, who is 16 years old and works at an ice-cream parlor. The two members of the family are no longer living with it including Larry Grapes who has left the family and is doing the job of a flight attendant, and Albert Grapes, who is the deceased father of the children; he committed suicide 14 years earlier.
The movie utilized for this assignment was What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. This movie explored the life of the Grape family consisting of Gilbert, Ellen, Arnie, Bonnie and Amy. (Hallström, Blomquist, Matalon, Ohlsson, Teper 1993). The movie reveals the struggles that the family face while raising Arnie who had a chronic mental illness (Hallström et al., 1993). This paper will discuss the priority concerns and corresponding interventions that are pertinent for the Grape family based on thorough use of the Calgary family assessment model. The focus of this papers assessment on the family will be on the functional aspect; however the structural and developmental aspects have been assessed.
From being able to save up money to buy a car and move out to West Virginia and then leaving the responsibility of finances and income to her children, Rose Mary Wall’s helped put Jeanette and her siblings through a hard and tough childhood. Although, a debate could be made that with all the awful impacts that the mother had on her children, all she really did was actually positively influence them to be able to conquer any hardship that they may face in their life. In the end, Rose Mary Wall’s character of being independent, unreasonable, and stubborn did both positively and negatively impact her children’s lives through the hardships they all faced
Coping with situations within FRIED GREEN TOMATOES Human Nature, it’s our instinct, our reaction, our thoughts, and our ability to make decisions. It has been examined from every conceivable angle. It has been scrutinized, interrogated, glorified and even corrupted by every medium in the world, but none so extensively as the written word. Literature has explored every component of human nature, from pride to envy and insecurity to depression. Fannie Flagg’s novel FRIED GREEN
He continually shows his inability to accept blame and fully believes his problems are a result of another person’s actions, with the first person possibly being the one who gave him his name. He was very rebellious and would not listen or cooperate with anyone. An example of this was his mother's concern over what was becoming of him and her decision to take him to church. “When he saw the big lighted church, he jerked out of his grasp and ran”. It was clear his mother had lost all control of him at this time.
On one instance they met a farmer and his wife, and while the wife invited them to dinner, the husband was reluctant at first do to money being tight because there were no jobs. Josh then says, “Maybe we shouldn’t, Joey and I don’t want to take food you need.” The farmer immediately replies no and invites them to his house for dinner. Josh and Joey almost starved on many occasions and sometimes the only way to stay alive was to eat food out of the garbage cans. Josh never told Joey this is where some of the food came from because it pained him to think about it, and Josh always made Joey stay behind on these occasions, so he would not see him picking garbage cans in desperation. Sadly, what was humiliating was having to go door to door and have people watch as one begs for food in order to stay alive another day. Josh noticed that after only a few weeks how all he thought about was food, and this is another similarity between Josh and his father. All Josh’s father thought about was putting food on the table, and Josh never realized how it could consume one till he had to experience it himself. To wrap up, one can see how begging for food is demeaning and how it can leave one with emotional scars, but it also makes one thankful for the simple necessities in
“I lay awake at night, rubbing my feet with my hands, trying to warm them.” Jeanette (176) In this scene, Jeanette is trying to keep warm inside of their poorly insulated shack in Welch, West Virginia. She was forced to face a freezing winter with only a stove inside of their living room to keep warm. Another time she says: “We did eat less. Once we lost our credit with the commissary, we quickly ran out of food.” (67) This is the height of the hunger in the Walls family. Rex lost his job and had no money coming in. Jeannette tried not to complain but when she couldn’t keep it inside anymore and let one small word of complaint her mother replied with “It’s not my fault you’re hungry” P.(69). This is a good example for how neglectful Rosemary is. It is in fact her fault that they are hungry because it is her responsibility to take care of her children. This is a perfect segway to the next issue,
Rose Mary is a selfish woman and decides not to go to school some mornings because she does not feel up to it. Jeannette takes the initiative in making sure that her mother is prepared for school each morning because she knows how much her family needs money. Even though Rose Mary starts to go to school every day, she does not do her job properly and thus the family suffers financially again. When Maureen’s birthday approaches, Jeannette takes it upon herself to find a gift for her because she does not think their parents will be able to provide her with one. Jeannette says, “at times I felt like I was failing Maureen, like I wasn’t keeping my promise that I’d protect her - the promise I’d made to her when I held her on the way home from the hospital after she’d been born. I couldn’t get her what she needed most- hot
In the film "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?" directed by Lasse Hallstrom in 1993, one of the main ideas is that of struggle and hardship. This idea is significant to the film because it relates to each character in a different way, making the storyline more interesting. Three different techniques used by Lasse Hallstrom to illustrate the idea of struggle and hardship include Gilberts voice over, the extra close-ups of Bonnie as she climbs the stairs and the double up of dialogue, where Mrs Carver is talking to Gilbert, and Mr Carver is heard tying to entertain their children in background.
After watching the movie “What’s eating Gilbert Grape” it focuses more on Gilbert Grape than any other characters in the movie. Gilbert Grape is a young man who resides in a small community called Endora. Gilbert at the beginning of the movie states “Describing Endora is like dancing to no music”. Gilbert’s youngest brother Arnie is soon to be 18 years old and has a developmental disability that never was disclosed in the movie. Furthermore, Bonnie Gilbert’s mother has been locked in her own home since her husband committed suicide seven years ago. Moreover, Bonnie is at the stage of stagnation. She is over-weighted and doesn’t think of doing anything for herself or for any of her children. Therefore, leaving Gilbert with the full responsibility of caring for his family especially Arnie.
“I don’t know why he don’t go and get him a decent job and take care of that woman he got”(1.1.40). Troy sees it as a man's duty to take care of his woman. In Troy's mind, Lyons, Troy’s son, is failing his duty as a man because Lyons is living off his girlfriend, Bonnie’s income and Troy finds it disgraceful. On the other hand, Troy feels that he failed in his duty as a father by not being around to provide for Lyons when he was a child. Troy was in prison most of Lyons childhood so Lyons had no one to look up to or anyone there for him.
This is the reason why Troy fights against his family and himself, because he feels like he is the only one who can protect them. To Cory and Rose, Troy is destroying the family because of his stubborn thoughts but to Troy he is saving the family from falling apart and this distrust causes the family to eventually fall apart. Troy really does try his hardest to be a good father and is bothered by the fact that Rose and Cory do not see it as him trying to protect them but more of him destroying the family. This hurts Troy because his family is his everything they are what he “fights” for he works day end and day out to put food on the table and try to give them a life he thinks the deserve. August Wilson in “fences” Troy says, “ I love this woman, so much it hurts. I love her so much… I done run out of ways to love her.”(1.1) Wilson uses to show how much Troy actually cares for his wife, to Troy Rose is his everything, she is the light in his darkness, she try’s to guide him back to a sane man. Another Way Wilson shows how much Troy loves his family is when Troy is talking to his family and says that “ You all line up at the door, with your hands out. I give you the lint from my pockets. I give you my sweat and my blood…”(1.3) Troy is saying that he will give them everything until he has absolutely nothing but the lint from his pockets. He will go out of his way to make
What's eating Gilbert Grape was the movie that I chose to correlate with my media project. The movie was enjoyable and had a very unique perspective to the family system. It wasn't the average Caucasian family that most media outlets portray but instead a highly dysfunctional family. I wanted to do a different approach to the media project and break it down by family members(characters) and then combine the family aspects. Every member of the family has a unique personality and feeds into every aspect of the family system. I will first discuss the movie premise before going into the details of each family member. Then towards the end I will look at the family as a whole unit with various parts.
Gilbert supports herself even when others would not. She knew that she could not rely on others, but instead herself. As stated in Emerson’s essay, “These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members.” (Emerson 3) This is shown in Eat Pray Love when Gilbert had difficulty in the beginning of the book because of her uncertainty with her relationship with her husband and the thought of having kids. She believed that having children was a ‘must’ for women her age, but she was skeptical about the idea. Gilbert believed that she had the ‘perfect’ life and yet was confused as to why she was not happy with it. This is due to the fact that society conforms the way people think, making them believe a certain way is the correct way. This often leads into confusion and doubtfulness of oneself. In the end, Gilbert managed to break from this and chose to listen to herself and guide herself along her