Sample Topic Sentence Outline for Gilbert Grape Assignment
Thesis Stmt.: What is "eating" Gilbert Grape is a fear of life because he comes to
understand clearly that to live is to risk accident, change, and loss; in fact, to live
means, eventually and inescapably, to die. So, ultimately, what's eating Gilbert
Grape is death.
Topic Sent. 1: The film emphasizes, through its repeated references to eating and
images of food, that something is "eating" Gilbert.
Topic Sent. 2: Gilbert's passiveness and emotionlessness indicate a fear of living
because to really live, the film suggests, is to want, to feel, and to choose.
examples: Gilbert sits with his back to the road in the first caravan scene.
G. indifferently allows himself to become Betty's lover.
G. cannot say "what [he] wants for [him]self."
Topic Sent. 3: By peopling the film with father figures who are dead or dying,
Hallstrom suggests that Gilbert's life is already kind of death-in-life.
examples: his father, Mr. Lamson, Ken Carver
Topic Sent. 4: By filling the film with either/or options which suggest the past or
the future, the film maker suggests that Gilbert is poised between two choices: to
go forward and live, or to look backwards and die (or be "as good--or as bad--as
dead").
2 friends: Bob represents Death; Tucker represents Life
2 grocery stores: the store of the past and the store of the future
2 lovers: (Betty/Becky) one connected to death; one attached to life
2 ceremonies: the funeral and the opening of burger barn
2 family events on the same day: Arnie's birthday and Momma's death
Topic Sent. 5: The film's momento moris remind Gilbert that death is everywhere
and that it is inescapable.
Bob and his hearse, "Dad's down there!" Momma's entombing flesh, the
town's name, "Endora," Ken's insurance company and his death, Gilbert's father's
"life" before his suicide, his suicide; Gilbert's dead-end job, "We're not going
anywhere!"; the trampoline
Topic Sent. 6: It is Becky who beckons Gilbert to life by example and by implying
that feelings, desire, and change are essential to living.
She asks him, "So what are you going to do?"
She asks him what he wants for himself.
She replies to Momma, "I wasn't always like this, either."
She is symbolically connected to "the road."
She beckons both brothers into the water.
She's "a worldly kind of girl."
Topic Sent. 7: Gilbert begins to opt for life when he explodes with frustration and
rage and takes his feelings out on Arnie.
Topic Sent. 8: Gilbert expresses his own desire when he insists that Becky and
Momma meet.
Topic Sent. 9: Gilbert makes a choice, a decision that Momma will not be made a
joke of. (Gilbert's choice is influenced by Momma's courageous choice to climb
the stairs, which is in turn influenced by Becky's remark, above, which implies
that change is always possible, that it is a normal part of life.)
Topic Sent. 10 (Conclusion): At the end of the film, when Gilbert faces the road as
he waits with Arnie for the caravan, we understand that he has chosen to live,
despite and perhaps even because of the fact that life inevitably results in death.
He understands now what Becky told him earlier: "It's what you do that matters."