What's Eating Gilbert Grape?

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For starters, he is having an affair with a married woman and decides to end things with her; shortly after this the woman’s husband dies and she moves away. There is also a new girl that comes in town that Gilbert falls for and she brings out another side of him in a way. Plus, his brother is having his 18 th birthday, which is a big deal. And in the end, the mom dies. All of these things of course impact Gilbert. Thoughts on book I’ll start with the Grape children. For starters, Ellen, the youngest Grape, was so annoying in the book! There are the weird comments she makes which I mentioned, but she is also just so lazy and unhelpful. Amy and Gilbert have to do so much and any time she is asked to help in some way all she does is complain and make smart alec remarks. She is also very social and is always going out on dates and with friends. The movie shows all this to some extent, but not as much as the book. She also doesn’t help much with Arnie, and one day Amy asks her to go get him because he is somewhere in town. Gilbert is driving by and sees her literally dragging him. Gilbert gets out of the car and yells at her for having treated Arnie so poorly. This scene is shown in the movie, but she is trying to get Arnie away from the water tower and is being rough with him; which makes a bit more sense because getting him away from the tower was important. Whereas in the book she was being rough with him because she was simply losing patience. The book also talks about how when there is a crowd, she will act like she is the most doting sister to Arnie. So just an all around lazy fake. From a passage in the book where Momma is talking to Gilbert about motherhood/creastion: "I see you and I know that I'm a god. Or a goddess. Godlike! And this house is my kingdom. Yes, Gilbert. This chair is my throne. And you, Gilbert, are my knight in shimmering armor."..."Shining, I think, Momma, is what you mean."..."No, I know what I mean. You don't shine, Gilbert. You shimmer. You hear?. You shimmer!" I'm standing with binoculars, looking down Highway 13; there is no sign of our annual carnival. The kid is on his knees, his hands rummaging around in the picnic basket. Having already eaten both bags of potato chips, both peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and both chocolate donuts, he locates a green apple and bites into it.

What's Eating Gilbert Grape is a 1993 American coming-of-age drama film directed by Lasse Hallström, and starring Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio, Juliette Lewis and Darlene Cates. It follows 25-year-old Gilbert (Depp), a grocery store clerk caring for his morbidly obese mother (Cates) and his intellectually disabled younger brother Arnie (DiCaprio) in a fictional town in Iowa named Endora. Peter Hedges wrote the screenplay, based on his 1991 novel of the same name. Filming took place from November 1992 to January 1993 in various parts of Texas. Along the same lines, Arnie comes across as little more than a mischievous sprite who enjoys climbing Endora’s water tower and is always in need of a good scrubbing. Intellectually handicapped characters beg for multi-dimensional depictions (think Flowers for Algernon). The story demands more… everything about him. Remembered chiefly for his relentless "optimism," Albert Grape nevertheless hung himself in his basement. How might this irony persist in Gilbert's own life, particularly in his relationship with his boss, Mr. Lamson? Throughout the novel, what does Gilbert reveal to us about his father? What sort of legacy has Albert left his son? When Johnny Depp was talking about this movie in an interview he said how “…love can be painful…there’s a fine line between love and resentment…”. Even if you don’t have a martyr complex, love can be difficult and painful, and as he says there is a line between doing something for someone out of love versus doing it because you feel you have to and then it turns into resentment. Ultimately, in every relationship, whether it is with family, friends, or romantic, you need to do what you feel good about. If you do something you really don’t want to, you will simply resent the person you did it for. I’m not saying to be selfish though, if whatever it is, is really important to the person you love though, you can also try and find a way to do it in a way that you will feel good about or that will make it enjoyable for you. You just can’t keep making sacrifices for people, and then feel contempt when they start taking it for granted because it has just becomes the norm. Gilberts Breaking Point

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By the book’s exhilaratingly luminous ending . . . we have already been mesmerized.” — The Philadelphia Inquirer

What’s Eating Gilbert Grape could have been really something if it had Gilbert and Bonnie just as they are, but with a honed mother-and-son focus or if it had Gilbert and Arnie just as they are, but with the honed focus on him and his brother. Or, if Hedges wanted to be ambitious, it could have all three, fully developed. The story was adapted into a screenplay by the author of the book, Peter Hedges. After this, he went on to be a screen writer, so this book and movie really changed his life. Since the author himself is the one who adapted the story, it made me feel like I couldn’t be too upset about changes that were made, since the author himself apparently made the changes. Though I’m sure there were things the director wanted to do a certain way and Hedges had to go along with it. But still, having that in mind gave me a different outlook on the movie. Though there are of course still changes that I wasn’t a big fan of. Acting Hunter, Stephen (December 25, 1994). "Films worthy of the title 'best' in short supply MOVIES". The Baltimore Sun . Retrieved July 19, 2020.

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This book is not really informative, deep, or insightful. I am talking about the first person narrator (Gilbert) as well as the book. Gilbert is thoroughly mediocre in thought and deed. He wears a 'perma-frown'. He likes to brood. The book relies on his thoughts more than his actions, as he is very passive(repressed). Most of the supporting characters are annoyingly shallow.

Following the party, Bonnie climbs the stairs to her bedroom for the first time since her husband's suicide. Arnie later tries to wake her but discovers that she has died. With no way to remove her body from the second floor that evening, the police make plans to return with a crane the next day. Knowing that there will be a crowd of people looking to get a laugh, instead of paying their respects, the family, wanting to keep her death from becoming a joke, remove the furniture from the house and burn it down to the ground with her body still inside. In the first chapter, Arnie Grape tells Gilbert, "You're getting littler and littler. You're shrinking." "Stupid people sometimes say the smartest things," Gilbert reflects. With this exchange, what themes does Peter Hedges begin to develop in his novel? How is Gilbert shrinking?Like many before me, for a long time I had no idea that there was a book upon which one of the most important movies of my adolescent years was based. In the book there is a scene between him and Momma where she is unhappy with her life, but it doesn’t end up being as touching a scene as this one is in the movie. In the book she talks about how she is making the floor sink in and how her kids all want to kill each other. She then tells Gilbert to tell her he hates her. He is hesitant, but she pushes him to so then he says it. After he says it, it reads, “Momma’s eyes seem to swell. She looks at me hard and long. She thought she was going to enjoy my hate, but it has broken her. I can’t watch, so I barrel out of the house.” And this happened a couple days before she died. He never apologizes or brings it up though, because she did literally ask for him to say it. Ebert, Roger (March 4, 1994). "What's Eating Gilbert Grape". Roger Ebert. rogerebert.com . Retrieved August 23, 2021.