What's Eating Gilbert Grape Essay

Families are shown to be important in the film “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?”/ Within the movie there are three main types of family that we, as views, see. There are the nuclear family, two children with their natural parents, the single parent family and an extended or unorthodox family. The film suggests that the newer form of family, the extended family, is needed.

The nuclear family with two children and their parents, living together, is represented by the Carver family. Ken Carver (father) s a working man and supports his family while Betty Carver is a stay at home mother. And she performs the household duties. This is the sort of family that, in the past, society has supported. This sort of family is supposed to demonstrate love, security, acceptance and stability. These are the characteristics that children value. The Carver family showed glimpses of these characteristics. Love, shown by Betty Carver, towards her children, and security through the father providing money and material goods. However, this is not the sort of security a child looks for. This family does not function as well as it could. Small town country life may be okay for Ken Carver, but it seems to stifle his wife, and that leads to the breakdown of a happy marriage, and eventually the breakdown of the family life. This family is far from ideal. It does not work and the
This is the Grape family. Within this family unit there are five people. Bonnie Grape is the mother and she has four children; Gilbert, Amy Ellen and Arnie, who has been classified as autistic. When the family was still quite young, the father, Albert Grape, hung himself in the basement of the family home. In his passing, Gilbert became a substitute father for Arnie, and Amy became a substitute mother as Bonnie, his natural mother, over a period of time became obese and unable to help with him. This placed enormous stress on the family, especially