Big Fish Within the Short

Big Fish

Within the short novel Big Fish: A novel of Mythic Proportions by Daniel Wallace there is an expression of fantasy that is unparalleled. Within the web of the fantastic is a story of a man (Edward). The conflict arises when the man's son (William) questions the fantasies of his father, discounting the truth within and expressing little if any respect for the manner in which Edward expresses the story of his life. William is even at times embarrassed of the way that Edward illuminates the occurrences of his life and in the end he must unravel the truth and embrace the fantasy to truly understand his father.

Within this work there are several messages and main themes: the first being truth which is manifested as the desire of William to understand Edward, by trying to piece together his real life through the mythical stories his father tells him, the ending message being that truth is what you make of it, as a part of this interwoven theme is the theme of water, an expression of all that is fluid about reality and perception. This work will discuss these two aspects of the novella to answer questions about the ultimate meaning of the work that perception is the most important aspect of truth and your life is what you make it.

William's desire to understand his father through a staunch reality is never met in the novel, and there is a reason for this. Edward, even in his last days is trying to compel William to see the world through the eyes of fantasy, to make everything more meaningful. William wishes that Edward would speak the truth, rather than what he, as a boy and as an adult believes are his father's attempts to spin his life into fantasy to impress him, despite his long absence form his son's life. William gives the impression that he believes his father's stories are a fabrication that he has concocted, during long hours in lonely hotel rooms, while he traveled the south as a salesman. He seems not to believe, at first in any truth in the fantasy. To resolve this conflict within himself, William goes on a quest to discover the truths about his father, and in so doing he discovers that there are many truths in his tall tales and that the message his father was trying to send was of truth. "According to legend traveling salesman Edward Bloom has conquered giants, saved countless lives,...ripped out a wild dog's heart and stared into a glass eye containing the future...these legends are not the products of a forgotten age of history; they arise from the imagination of his son William, a boy whose youth Edward essentially missed. To make up for this, William has had to construct his father's life story from the whoppers and tall tales his father has been generating his whole life." (Introduction)

Throughout the novel, William pleads his father to tell the truth, to tell him what really happened, and his constant response is to retell him the fantastic stories of his life. So, much so that Edward stops asking, and listening to his father and seeks out his own truth, finding many of the places and people and worlds that Edward has created within the embellished stories of his youth. In one passage, it seems that Edward will break down and tell William a mundane story of his life, the way it really happened, William says "Nothing but the truth" and Edward responds with "So help me-, God. Fred. Whoever." And then goes on to tell a story of his own father's absence in his youth. "I remember once he had to go off somewhere to get a special kind of seed to plant in the fields. Hopped a freight. Said he'd be back that night. One thing and another happened and he couldn't get off. Rode it all the way to California. Gone most of the spring. Planting time came and went. But when he came back he had the most marvelous seeds." "Let me guess." I said. "He planted them and a huge vine grew up into the clouds, and at the top of the clouds was a castle, where a giant lived." "How did you know?" "You remember," he says. "Sure." "Remembering a man's stories makes him immortal, did you know that?" So in many conversations Edward gives hope to William that he will tell the mundane side of the story and then wanders off into a story so fantastic that it could never be true, yet in part it always is. Additionally, Edward takes William to a place in his mind where he begins to see what he wishes for his own legacy. He wants William to remember him in a larger than life way, to make up for his absence in his childhood but also to make himself immortal, through his stories. The resolution of the novel in fact creates a mythical ending to the life of the mortal, Edward as will be seen later in the discussion of water.

In his quest in reality and fantasy sequence William meets Edwards many friends, and finds places, such as Specter, the town that first saved Edward, when he first left Auburn and the town that he latter saved, by buying properties to restore its splendor. (155-156) Specter was a second life for Edward, and when William discovers the connection he has to the place he is at once jealous as he concocts a conventional stereotype of the second family, of the traveling salesman. It is from this discovery that William is incensed to seek out the truth, and what he finds is that Specter is real and is connected to his father's feelings of being a fish out of water. In Specter Edward finds the water of his very dry life, possibly the remembrance of Auburn before he left it as it had been trapped in time by isolation and lack of progress. "Specter has that special somber quality, he says to himself, a quality not unlike living under water, that he can appreciate." (144)

The authors description, through the thoughts of William, of Edward's connection to water and all the symbolism of its expression, free flowing ideas that often creates picturesque visions and clouds the real view of things as they are. Under water everything looks brighter and more mysterious, more idyllic. One of the author's first expressions of Edwards connection to water is at the beginning of one of the sequences where he begins to tell the "truth" and waylays to fantasy. "He takes another sip of water. It seems not to be a matter of thirst so much as it is a desire for this element, to feel it on his tongue, his lips: he loves the water. Once upon a time he swam." This passage serves as foreshadowing to the conclusion of the novella, just as so many other references to water and Edward's desire to feel it and be a part of it. The language of this passage also strongly accentuates the skill of the author to create an intricate patchwork of ideas, the passage "once upon a time" often beginning a story, usually of mythic proportions, used in reference to an old pastime of Edward's, swimming, is skilful in that it treats the last passages of the work as a part of the circle of Edward's life, in his youth, "once upon a time" he swam and in his future he will swim forever. More foreshadowing of Edward's connection to water and his eventual transformation can be seen in the passage just before William's resolution, of his father's immortality is expressed. "That water. William? He said after a minute. "Oh, I said, "Here." It was beside me on the seat. I opened the top and passed it to him. One shaky, scaly hand appeared from beneath the folds and took it from me. But instead of drinking it, he poured it all over himself." (177) William is developing the idea that his father is becoming something else, with a scaly hand. Through the development of disease, bodies change to an often-unrecognizable level but here his father's scaly appearance demonstrates a different kind of transformation.