Åsa on the Gilbert Grape movie Saturday, October 25, 2008

I have now read your posts and made a short comment on each post as well. I enjoyed reading them and you all have a lot of insight into life and into what it means to be human. You showed great understanding for the difficulties that Gilbert and the family have, but you also realized that having too many responsibilities and never putting yourself first can be mentally and emotionally draining.
You chose to interpret the ending in a positive way which I do too. The movie deals a lot with images of being stuck in a place or in a mental state you cannot escape from. Arnie represents both freedom of speech (he says what noone else dares to say) and the freedom of mobility (he tries to climb the water tower and he never stops moving about). The ending shows that both Gilbert and Arnie are "free to go" and that they are able to break free of what has been holding them back. That is a very liberating feeling, I think!
I hope you enjoyed writing in the blog. I think it adds a lot to share your experience with others and actually find out what other people think and feel is important for our learning process and our understanding of both ourselves and others.
I will work on the blog's design a bit to make it look more interesting. If you feel like checking out what the third-year-students at our school are blogging about go to: www.studenter09.blogspot.com