Gilbert Grape Family Case Studies

The author of this paper will analyze the film, “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.” This analysis will identify the strengths, weaknesses, and barriers that the family is encountering. The social worker will assist the Grape family with identifying goals to work on as individuals, and as a unit. One way is to implement a Generalist Intervention Model. The GIM can be used as a tool in assessing the family and their environment. When a family is in crisis, there are many agencies and social services that can help with issues. From a Macro level perspective, the Grape family slipped through the cracks in the system. The author will describe what macro social work entails. The National Association of Social Workers has created a Code of

The Grapes are a family living in a rural and economically depressed community. The members of the Grape family presently residing in the familial home consists of biological birth mother Bonnie Grape, who is unemployed and 54 years of age. Amy Grape, the eldest child, Unemployed and currently 34 years of age. Gilbert Grape, the eldest male sibling who is employed at a local grocery store and is currently 24, years of age. Arnie Grape is Gilbert’s younger brother and is presently turning 18 years of age. Arnie reaching his 18th birthday is considered to be somewhat of a triumph by the Grape family, as Arnie suffers from a debilitating medical condition that has not only kept him from achieving age appropriate

Jeannette’s self-reliant behavior is frequently shown through her refusal of help from others. On one trip to retrieve her father from a bar, Jeannette’s father is so drunk that he can no longer walk. Another man offers to drive them home, and

The film, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape revolves around a single-parent household and four children. The narration is from Gilbert’s perspective, the third eldest brother of five, and his transition into adulthood as well as figuring out his life goals. Due to psychological stress on the children’s mother and financial hardship, the children have more responsibility than most children their age, and this responsibility interferes with their goals for the future (What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?). The content areas of focus are, Gilbert’s quest to find his purpose in life, as well as a healthy romantic

The Grapes of Wrath is a book that takes place during the late 1930s. The 1930’s were known as the Dirty Thirties. One of the essential characters in the book The Grapes of Wrath was a man who went to prison for four years. He comes back to his homeland to find that all farms around him were deserted. They remained deserted as a result of the Great Depression.

What’s Eating Gilbert Grape is a 1993 American drama film written by Peter Hedges and directed by Lasse Hallstrom. The film’s main characters are Johnny Depp as Gilbert Grape and Leonardo DiCaprio as Arnie Grape. The film depicts the burden of family caretaking and the affect it has on a family both mentally, physically, and financially. Gilbert is the primary caregiver for his mentally and developmentally disabled seventeen-year-old brother Arnie (who has the mental capacity of a young child), his morbidly obese mother Bonnie, known as Mama, and his two sisters Amy and Ellen. Amy, the oldest daughter, shares most of the household chores with Gilbert and helps with Arnie’s care. She plays the mother figure role for Arnie even though Arnie’s mother is alive. Ellen, the youngest daughter, is very negative in her feelings toward her family. She doesn’t help much with the family because she is busy being a teenage girl.

Arnie Grape was referred to this agency by Sheriff Jerry Farrell of the Endora Police Department. He was concerned about Arnie's continued lack of supervision. Sheriff Farrell stated that

In Grapes, also, greed brings a terrible cost to all those involved. For example, the Californians, to protect themselves, greedily cover their jobs and attempt to force the migrants to leave, saying, “You’re in California, an’ we don’t want you...Okies settlin’ down.” (Steinbeck, 2006). The cost they pay is a loss of humanity, a loss of conscience, as no longer will the Californians help those in need, allowing for migrants and entire families to die and for them to sadly strike out against those who speak out. Yet the Joad family, at times, portrays their own greed. They take a job as a strikebreaker during a strike lead by one of the family’s best friends, John Casy, only to have Casy die and Tom nearly arrested again for murder. Also, the family shows greed by constantly moving in search of new jobs. As the family leaves the government camp, Tom, Pa and Al all have jobs, yet Ma wants even more money even though the camp supplies entertainment and, to an extent, food. However, the family wants more in their pocket, and so they leave that land of plenty into a dangerous, unknown land of hatred, fear, and anger and pay in many, many ways. Finally, the Joad family uses the dead Grandma to enter California, showing their greed and

One would say that on a literal level The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is about the Joad family's journey to California during The Dust Bowl. However, it is also about the unity of a family and the concept of birth and death, both literal and abstract. Along with this, the idea of a family unit is explored through these births and deaths.

Overall, the Brice family has some clear issues that are causing stress for everyone, including their adolescent daughter Claudia. The family did not believe in the power of family therapy, yet they had little places to turn to in response to Claudia's growing anger problems. They had tried therapy before, but to no avail. We are introduced to their problems both from a description of the anger between each other and their own explanations of what is going on. Their son Don is absent, both literally and figuratively, showing how he tends to avoid the overall family struggles. Claudia's role in the family dynamic was described early on by her mother, yet this explanation was done in a very isolating way for Claudia. Her mother explained her "strange" ideas, but that only invoked a strong and angry reaction from Claudia herself. In fact, the two seemed to feed off one another in terms of their anger. It is clear that the main issues were a discrepancy between what Claudia wanted her life to be like and the heightened rules and expectations her family was imposing on her. Mother and daughter continuously engaged in fighting, clearly not seeing each others point of view, but too caught up in their own emotional reactions regarding the situation. The fact that Don wasn't present just put more highlight on Claudia, and showed how the family viewed her as the problem, not taking responsibility for it themselves. This was felt by

In the film "What's Eating Gilbert Grape?" directed by Lasse Hallstrom in 1993, one of the main ideas is that of struggle and hardship. This idea is significant to the film because it relates to each character in a different way, making the storyline more interesting. Three different techniques used by Lasse Hallstrom to illustrate the idea of struggle and hardship include Gilberts voice over, the extra close-ups of Bonnie as she climbs the stairs and the double up of dialogue, where Mrs Carver is talking to Gilbert, and Mr Carver is heard tying to entertain their children in background.

The Grapes of Wrath is set in the horrible stage of our American history, the Depression. Economic, social, and historical surroundings separate the common man of America into basically the rich and poor. A basic theme is that man turns against one another in a selfish pride to only protect themselves. For example, the landowners create a system in which migrants are treated like animals and pushed along from one roadside camp to the next. They are denied decent wages and forced to turn against their fellow scramblers to simply survive.

     The book, Grapes of Wrath, follows the life of the Joad family, who live in Oklahoma during the Depression. The story begins with the return of Tom Joad from prison, where he has spent the last few years. He killed a boy in a bar fight and is now on parole. He is taken by surprise when he returns to Oklahoma only to find that his house is in ruins and his family is not there. He doesn’t know that, while he was gone, the banks forced his family and thousands of others off their land. Tom is accompanied by a former priest, Casey, who searches with Tom for his family. Tom and Casey find the Joad family at Tom’s uncle’s house. The family is preparing to move west to California in hopes that they

What’s Eating Gilbert Grape is a motion picture drama that follows the life of the Grape family in the small, lackluster town of Endora (Hallstrom, 1993). Gilbert Grape, played by a young Johnny Depp, is the film’s predominant character and apparent man of the family after his father’s death. Throughout the movie, Gilbert narrates his thoughts as he attempts to navigate his familial responsibilities, his work, and his personal life. Gilbert struggles to take care of Bonnie, his morbidly obese mother, his new love interest, Becky, and his autistic brother, Arnie. Arnie is played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and for the purpose of this assignment, will be the focus of this analysis.

In Steinbeck's novel, The Grapes of Wrath, he describes the struggle of the small farmer and farmworker. The principal characters define quiet dignity and courage in their struggle to survive and in the caring for their loved ones. Through this novel, Steinbeck displays his respect for all the poor and oppressed of our world.