What's Eating Gilbert Grape? by Maria Saturday, October 25, 2008

I thought the movie was good because it was realistisc,it can happend in real life and it was a very deep and sad story.
Gilbert has two sisters and a brother. His brother Arnie was born with a disability. The doctor said that Arnie just would live to ten years if he was lucky, but his tenth birthday passed and in a few days Arnie would turn eighteen.
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Their father killed himself one day in the basement and nobody could understand why. After that, their mother went
in a depression, she started to eat a lot and she became obese. After a while she almost couldn’t move, she was just sitting in the living room sofa and watching TV.
The scene that i remember the most is when Arnie finds his mother dead in the bed. It was so heartbreaking to see the reaction of Arnie because he loved his mother so much, she was like his protector. It almost made me want to cry (and i never cry in movies).
Gilbert has a lot of responsibility, he has to take care of Arnie which could be hard on him because he can n´t have a personal life, and in the same time work in a grocery store. The parents should have the main responsibility of the family not the children, but you also have to have responsibility of yourself. Under the curcumstances Gilbert was in he had no choice.
Gilbert meets a girl named Becky they start to spend some time togheter, she notice that he thinks about everybody but himself so she trys different ways to make that happend. If you think about everyone the hole time you will forgett about yourself and what you want in life and in the end will feel unhappy, but i´m not saying you shouldn´t think of others becasuse that makes you to a caring person.
Gilbert is only a human and we can sometimes get tierd of doing the same things all the time, so i don´t think he means anything bad when he says "some days you want him to live and som days you don´t" I think it just means that he is tired of taking care of Arnie, i suppose it has to be tiring to allways have to think where Arnie could be, if he is hurt and to have a huge responsibility if anything happends to him but you can see in the movie that Gilbert really loves Arnie.
When Arnie says "I can go anytime" I don´t think he is fully aware of what he is saying. He probably allways heard it when he was younger, when they thought he was going to die.
I think that the most important message is that sometimes you have to sacrifice yourself for your loved once, because in the end life will pay you back.
I think Gilbert is going to spend the rest of his life together with Becky they will probably travel a lot at first but later they will settle down to have a family and Arnie will follow them where ever they will go. Gilbert´s sisters are going to study and have careers.