What's Eating Gilbert Grape

Albert Grape built the Grape family's home. It becomes a symbol of trauma and control and a type of prison for the Grape family after he dies by suicide in the basement. For Bonnie, the house is both the site where she spent many happy years with her husband and growing family and the place where he abandoned her and the family. Bonnie makes herself a prisoner in this house by compulsively overeating in the years after her husband’s death due to grief and depression. Larry, the oldest son, found his father on the day of his death and sees the home as a dark place filled with bad memories. This appears to be his reason for not returning to the home, other than for Arnie’s birthday each year. Amy is a young woman who spends her life raising her mother’s children in this home instead of creating her own life somewhere else. Gilbert, too, finds himself forced into an adult role in the house early by the death of his father, pushed into being Arnie’s caregiver. Although Janice and Ellen appear unaffected by the house, they are both drawn back to it by their obligations to the family. When Bonnie dies, the siblings choose to set the home on fire after salvaging meaningful possessions from it, destroying the space where both their parents died.