Big Fish: The Fish As A Metaphor For Life

Big Fish (2003), directed by Tim Burton, is a film full of symbolism and metaphor. It’s not the dark, sinister scenes we normally associate with Burton. It’s the exact opposite. Big Fish is all color, light and harmony.

The film is about the life of Edward Bloom and his relationship with his son Will. Will lives in Paris with his pregnant wife. His relationship with his father deteriorated years ago and they communicate through his mother, Sandra.

One day Sandra calls her son to tell him that his father is seriously ill. So Will and his wife decide to visit him.

The father-son relationship

Edward and Will had a great relationship during Will’s childhood. Over the years, however, their relationship has cooled. Edward is known for telling stories of amazing exploits involving giants, witches, werewolves, and so on. Will loved these stories when he was a kid, but growing up he realized they weren’t real.

With his father dying, Will wants nothing more than to know the truth about him. He just can’t accept that his father doesn’t stick to the facts when he tells stories.

He tries to convince his father to tell him the truth, but Edward is very proud of his stories. It’s something he doesn’t want to change, not even for his son.

Paradoxically, Will is a writer himself. He too tells fantastic stories about things that never existed and never will. We can see that, deep down, Edward and Will aren’t that different. One tells stories and the other writes them down.

Acceptance

Will struggles to accept his father. He doesn’t trust him and he has come up with theories to justify why he was never there when he was growing up.

In the particular stage of life they are in, Will becomes a kind of replacement for his father. Edward’s life is coming to an end and another life is on the way. Will will be the father figure his son needs.

First, Will judges and criticizes his father. He does not think he has been a good example. However, being a parent is never easy and Will will now find out for himself.

He wants to be a very different kind of father than his father was before him. He wants to tell his son the truth. Slowly but surely, Will learns to accept his father and understand an important truth: his father will leave him his stories and Will will take his place.

The metaphors in Big Fish

Big Fish is the type of story that uses and combines a wide variety of narrations and incidents. It is the life story of Edward Bloom. The last name is immediately a metaphor. Blooming is exactly what Edward does, just like a flower. He is born, he reaches the zenith of his existence, and then he withers, little by little.

There are many metaphors in this movie. We will try to explain the most important and interesting.

The fish

When Edward tells stories of his childhood, the fish is an important figure. The fish is actually the common thread in the film, from start to finish. It is the metaphor for Edward himself. When he was little, he read about a fish that changed size depending on its environment. If this fish lives in the wild, it can grow up to three times its size.

Edward understands that he is the same as the fish and that his limitations in life are the same as the fishbowl. If he wants to achieve his goals, he has to figure things out based on these limitations.

And we can extend this metaphor even further. When we escape the fishbowl, we are free, we can set our course and achieve great things. At the same time, leaving the fishbowl can be terrifying because we don’t know what’s out there.

The eye

What can you be afraid of now if you already know how your life will end? In Edward’s childhood stories, there is a witch with a glass eye. If you look at the glass eye, you see how you are going to die. Edward looks at it, sees how he will die, and accepts it.

When he finds himself in a dangerous situation, he confronts it and says to himself, “This is not how I will die.” In this way, he is able to overcome obstacles and keep moving forward.

Edward accepts his fate, a fate that is the same for all people: death. He confronts it and overcomes it, he is not guided by fear.

Ashton

This is Edward’s fishbowl. It is the town in which he was born. A town that is far too small for all its desires and dreams. Yet he is loved by his neighbors and can do great things in his fishbowl. He does all this with ease, without having to overcome too many obstacles.

The fishbowl is our comfort zone. It represents conformism. It’s the place where we feel safe and it’s hard to leave. However, in our fishbowl, our opportunities to learn are limited. That’s why Edward decides to face the unknown and leave his fishbowl.

Spectre

After leaving Ashton and starting his journey, he encounters a number of obstacles that he must overcome in order to get to Spectre. This is a utopian town where everyone walks barefoot and where nothing ever happens.

There he meets Norther Winslow, a well-known poet and former resident of Ashton. Like Edward, Norther was destined to achieve great things. That’s why he made the same journey.

However, Norther snaps into another fishing hook and can no longer write poems. He ends up in another fishbowl. Spectre, despite being a beautiful place, is just another comfort zone.

Edward plans to stay, but he changes his mind and keeps moving. He still has a lot to see. The screenwriter did not choose the name Specter at random. Actually it is a reference to ghosts and apparitions. Specter is not only a fishbowl, it is also a deceptive place.

There is a fish in the river that Edward thinks is a woman as it changes shape depending on the desire of the individual looking at it. Here we see Edward’s desire to find a wife.

The ring

If a fish wants to reach its maximum size, it must not let itself be caught. Edward must therefore avoid all the fish hooks that occur in his life. He must avoid returning to the fishbowl, at least until he achieves his goals and learns his lessons.

But when the right fishing hook presents itself, we all risk falling into a trap. In other words, Edward rejects fishhook after fishhook until he finds the right one. The fish Edward talks about is caught by his wedding ring.

Edward’s fishhook was his wife, Sandra. But to get to that point, he had to overcome endless obstacles, get out of his comfort zone, learn his lessons and, at the end of his life, take off his shoes in a new comfort zone.

Shoes

Shoes protect our feet when we walk. When we get home, we don’t need them anymore. In Specter, all residents walk around barefoot. They don’t need to keep moving and that’s why they don’t need their shoes.

Despite this, Edward leaves Specter without his shoes. Barefoot, he confronts and overcomes the panic zone. At the end of our lives, we no longer need shoes. We can settle down and our shoes become redundant.

Big Fish is a modern fantasy story that shows us a different way of seeing life, of accepting it. We are all capable of extraordinary things if we manage to overcome our fears, leave our comfort zone and go our own way.