What's Eating Gilbert Grape centers around a dysfunctional family living in a house that is about as rundown as the town. Among many issues in the Grape family, they are tasked with taking care of their classically autistic brother Arnie and their clinically overweight mother, who hasn’t left the house in seven years due to a depression that set in a little bit after her husband committed suicide. While they have to deal with these issues, they are constantly ridiculed by the townspeople of Endora. I personally thoroughly enjoy this movie every time I watch it, but feel at the time when I first watched it, I did not really understand some of the key issues that were happening in the movie and now watching it again I feel it made much more…show more content… Gilbert had to take the role of father for Arnie, He is also the one take care of him the most because his sisters are stepping into the roles of the housewife as their mother is not able to. Gilbert is also with the one who is the main provider in the family at the store which is getting almost no business because of the new supermarket that went up across town. He is the one who is always with Arnie making sure that no one hurts him that he doesn't get into trouble, he is very protective of Arnie, saying that " no one messes with Arnie, and if they do Gilbert will take care of it, because he's Gilbert. Even though Gilbert is protective of Arnie, he allows himself as well as others to make fun of his mother because she unable to help herself and has given up on trying anything. This absence of a mother, I believe, leads him to affair with a married woman who has children. Gilbert says very often that he is going nowhere and I believe he feel stuck like he won't amount to anything so he just keep going through the motions of everyday life because he feels like he has no purpose. I personally love his character I love how he cares for his brother. But I also believe that everyone has a purpose and they just have to go out in the world and find
