“What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” shows that relationships are both stifling and essential to personal happiness.
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape portrays many different types of relationships. Gilbert’s relationships with his family can at times be both stifling and essential. “Endora is where we are…it’s like dancing to no music.” With Arnie needing Gilberts care all of the time this relationship creates tension in his life. The new girl in town, Becky, creates a relationship quintessential for Gilberts’ life. She helps to open Gilbert up to his life and that he can in fact go anywhere.
The Grape family consists of Gilbert, Ellen, Amy, Mama, Larry, and of course, Arnie. The Grape family lives in an isolated town of Endora in a house that seems to be in a mess since their father, Albert Grape, died. Gilbert’s difficulty seems to have started when his father commit suicide seventeen years ago in their basement, which drove his mother to obesity and a life confined to their home. Gilberts’ mother accepts that she has become a “burden” on him and sees how he feels ashamed and humiliated by her. Gilbert even regards his mother as “a beached whale,” and at one point lifts a young boy to the window to see her almost like she is an animal at the zoo. Gilbert’s mother is not his only complication; his pointless affair with a frustrated housewife, Betty Carver, whose rash sexual demands have placed much hesitation on him. His oldest sister Amy is a very caring woman that tries to take on many responsibilities herself and the youngest sister Ellen, who is only fifteen, has many issues with her family that she is trying to overcome. The “yearly ritual” of Gilbert and Arnie watching the caravans that pass through Endora show what looks like a suppressive relationship between the two.
