Shelby Ridgeway
Mrs.Miller 3rd period
August, 25,2014

Whats eating Gilbert Grape? You may ask the same question but afteryou read this paper you will understand. I am going to prove how this Relates to Pyschology. Why the movie makes people understand what gilbert is going through while in the movie . In the beginning Gilbert is torn between talking care of his family and a girl who might just change his life forever . gilbert has two brothers and two sisters that all live in one house togther well his older brother left somtime but it dosnt say when . His family is a broken family because they have a mother but no father . A lot of people this day and age have broken familys or blended ones. So this relates to a lot of people Gilbert is kinda of the father figure to the family especially Arnie . Arnie was born with a mental disability . He was not suppose to live past ten years old and is now fixing to turn eighteen . The whole town treats him differntly because of it . He tries and tries to keep arnie out of trouble but its apparently very hard for him to be a father figure and arnie’s peacekeeper . Gilbert and his family strat to plan out arnie’s birthday party and arnie has a major meltdown and his whole faily starts to scream and yell trying to get the siuation under control . Anrie just continues to scream and yell , then their mother stands up and starts to stomp around when gilbert relizes that the floor in the house has becom every very weak in certain places. So he has to make repairs to the house withput his mother knowing because she thinks evrything is perfect the way it is . Gilbert’s mother is sevrely obese and I think she eats her feelings , She feels guilty that her husband left her and her kids to fend for thir own without him. So she eats and eats and eats then never leaves the house so she is very very unhealthy. She is super overprocetective over Arnie , so no matter what gilbert does it’s never enough SO arnie has a bad habit of running away and climbing the water tower so he has done it in the beginning of the movie three times , the last time the sheriff takes arnie into the station and puts hi in a holding cell. He dosnt understand whats hapining .
After Gilbert makes it to the house his mother desides to leave the house for thr first time in ages. This shows how much a family really loves each other .
Family love is the strongest type of love out there and many people don’t even recive that type, which in most options is very very sad. Gilbert is just trying to fix everything for evryone and he relizes that he is not fixing himself . He just has so much weight on his shoulders . Gilbert finally snaps one day and hits Arnie for not doing what he told him to and ruining his cake . Gilbert tries to leave town and run away from everything that he is facing . He is facing is younger sister not growing up and being mature , his older sister wanting to control evrything and arnie being mently unstable. Its just very hard on a family having a mentally unstable sibling or son/daughter along with the struggles of very hard