Death is a reaccurrent theme in the film whats eating gilbert grape: yet the ultimate effect is is hopefull and full of images of rebirth and life…
Well hopefull, but certainly not always showing images of rebirth and life, in many cases it is death that entraps people and other times offers freedoms or the chance to make dramatic changes to ones life. Gilberts fathers death didnt offer freedom at all in fact it is this that caused the entrapment of the family and the isolation we so commonly see throughout the film.
Albert Grape was the first death in the family and the film we dont know alot about him and why it happened but we know that he commited suicide. And this is where problemns for the grape family began. Living in the small town of Endora wit6h nothing the only sign of civilisation in the whole town being the recently opened foodland supermarket. Withe as Gilbert says “ life just passing them by.” A younger ortistic brother who needed to be under constant supervision adn cared for all of the time who offered Gilbert no privacy what so ever who was difficult ot control and sometimes a social embarrassenment.
For Gilbert ” sometimes you want him to live sometimes you dont.” so from the beginning it was going to be hard. But as a sign of mommas despair she resorted to comfort eating and gained weight untill she became so overweight she was completley incompetant. leaving her three children to care for her. Her husbands death had such an effect on her that she created a fear of being alone shown by her constant pleads to gilbert not to ‘ disappear’ on her. It was gilbert who became the fathre figure of the house taking care of momma arnie his own job and all the repairs on the house.
