Tim Burton's film Big Fish is often lauded, and for good reason. It's a film that resonates deeply, perhaps because its curious blend of the fantastical and the deeply human can be challenging to unravel. This exploration will look at Edward Bloom's extraordinary tales as windows into his subconscious, while the surrounding film depicts his everyday reality. We'll then consider how these stories stand alone, what messages they might offer, and the lessons they impart.

Edward Bloom certainly lived a life rich with experiences. He was a man in constant motion, always searching for the next adventure, which he then shared with others in a vivid, metaphorical, and often larger-than-life way. It wouldn't be fair to label him a mere braggart or a fantasist out of touch with the world; Edward is quite sociable, well-adjusted, and his stories generally inspire delight rather than resentment. Yet, not everyone is charmed by his narrative flair. His own son, Will, voices a clear rejection of his father's storytelling, creating a significant rift between them. What is it about these tales that so bothers Will, and what personal motivations and internal struggles does Edward himself express through them?

The Signature of a Storyteller: Deciphering Edward's Narratives

Each story Edward recounts about his life carries distinct hallmarks that help us piece together the man behind the myths.

• Exaggeration and Hyperbole: Every event, object, and individual in his tales is intentionally magnified. A giant isn't just tall; he's fifteen feet. A gift of flowers isn't a bouquet; it's an entire field. An illness requiring bed rest doesn't last days; it lasts three whole years.
• Fantastic Elements: His stories are populated with witches, werewolves, and the peculiar enchantment of the hidden town of Spectre, adding a layer of the unreal to his life's account.
• Recurring Motifs: Certain images and themes appear repeatedly:
  • The idea of a "big fish" or a significant catch.
  • The theme of perpetual movement and an underlying fear of stillness.

Each of these elements is laden with meaning, offering insights into Edward's psyche. The seeds of his internal conflicts, or the significant worsening of pre-existing ones, seem to have been sown in his childhood. This is vividly portrayed in his story about sudden, uncontrollable growth. It's plausible that a real, or perhaps dramatized, period of forced immobility due to illness left a profound mark on the young Edward, shaping his future character and path. He likely developed a potent fear of mortality, which later crystallized into two dominant anxieties:

1. A fear of being ordinary, unremarkable, just another face in the crowd, lacking distinction.
2. A fear of being worthless, of achieving nothing significant, essentially ending his days as a mediocrity and a failure.

We all possess a complex mix of contradictory traits: bravery and cowardice, intelligence and folly, uniqueness and commonplaceness. Different situations can bring different aspects of our personalities to the fore. A psychologically healthy individual tends to accept these varied facets of themselves. The term "perfectly healthy" is used pointedly, as such individuals are rare. Often, life doesn't unfold as we wish, and we may reject our less appealing traits or those we find difficult to manage. Consequently, these aspects are relegated to our "shadow," suppressed, and can later surface as fears or as disdain for others who exhibit these very qualities we dislike in ourselves.

What's the outcome? We essentially disown a part of our own personality, stashing it away in the depths of our unconscious to avoid the discomfort that comes with acknowledging our imperfections. This appears to be Edward's experience. His poles of perceived imperfection were:

1. Mediocrity (the antithesis of his desired originality)
2. Worthlessness (the opposite of his longed-for success)

These prospects terrified him so profoundly that he spent his life running from them, only confronting them at the very end.

Where Do We See These Fears?

The story of his gigantism during a Sunday church service is telling. What could better symbolize the mundane and the ordinary than the routine of weekly worship, being just like everyone else? During his illness, he reads about goldfish: "Living in an aquarium, goldfish grow poorly. In a pond, they become two, three, or four times larger." For Edward, the "big pond" was the wider world, the bustling city where he could become a "big fish"—achieve success, be someone—to escape being an unfulfilled provincial failure.

Let's revisit the characteristics of his stories:

• The motif of the big fish represented his drive for success and all it entailed. His personal accomplishments and life choices were his unique "catches."
• The fantastical nature of his tales served to highlight his personality's supposed unusual and original quality. The subtext is: extraordinary things happen to extraordinary people.
• Hyperbole amplified these traits, bolstered their impact, and helped him maintain a more positive self-image.
• The motif of constant movement was his strategy to evade his fears, to escape into activity and travel.

The outward sign of his inner contradictions was the conflict with his son. Will seemed determined to see his father's ordinariness, to prove he was just a simple man hiding behind grand tales, inflating his significance with fabricated exploits. Will, in a way, mirrored Edward's own internal struggle, his persistent refusal to accept the less glamorous parts of his own being.

The Unavoidable Stillness

In his later years, Edward is diagnosed with cancer. Psychosomatic perspectives on cancer sometimes suggest an unwillingness to live with current circumstances, a resistance to navigating a traumatic situation, or an internal struggle to adapt to new realities. For Edward, these new conditions were his advanced age, the necessity of staying home, ceasing work, and retiring—in essence, stopping. For him, to stop was to finally encounter the "demons" that had pursued him throughout his life, their menacing presence always at his back, urging him onward. He couldn't endure this confrontation with his fears, and it manifested as a devastating illness.

Yet, Edward Bloom did manage a brief, direct encounter with these fears when he had no other option: on his deathbed. In the face of death, sadly, we are all alike: ordinary, unremarkable. As the saying goes, death doesn't distinguish between a king and a commoner. It was in this poignant cinematic moment that Edward revealed another facet of himself—a weak, tired, and fading man. This inner process of integration is reflected in his son, Will, who finally sees his father as an ordinary human being, perceiving what he had yearned to see all along. Will then begins to weave his own imaginative tale about Edward's passing, changing in response to his father's internal shifts.

Edward Bloom departs. His life choices didn't ultimately lead him to a sense of wholeness; he couldn't fully face his "shadow" and chose instead to flee from it. This brings us to a crucial point. Dr. Bennett remarks to Will in the film: "If I had to choose between the true story and the embellished one about the fish and the ring, I would choose the latter." Had Edward taken steps to integrate the repressed parts of his personality, perhaps those beautiful, motivating, and inspiring stories would never have existed.

It seems a moral should be drawn from this analysis, but instead, let this conclude with a question: which story would you choose for yourself—mine, or the one told by Edward Bloom? "That's unthinkable." "The story of my life."

References

• Jung, C. G. (1964). Man and His Symbols. Dell Publishing.

  This book, particularly the sections authored by Jung himself and M.-L. von Franz, explores the concept of the unconscious, archetypes (like the "shadow"), and the role of symbols and dreams in revealing deeper aspects of the personality. Edward Bloom's stories can be seen as rich symbolic expressions of his inner life, his fears (shadow aspects like mediocrity and worthlessness), and his aspirations, aligning with Jung's ideas on how the unconscious communicates.

• McAdams, D. P. (2006). The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By. Oxford University Press.

  McAdams discusses the concept of "narrative identity," suggesting that people create and internalize stories about their lives to make sense of themselves and their experiences. Edward Bloom's elaborate tales are a powerful example of constructing a narrative identity, one that emphasizes originality and success, perhaps as a way to cope with underlying anxieties, which is a central theme explored by McAdams in the context of life stories. (Relevant sections would be those discussing the creation of personal myths and their function in life).

• Frankl, V. E. (1959). Man's Search for Meaning. Beacon Press.

  While not directly about storytelling in the same vein as Big Fish, Frankl's work explores the fundamental human drive to find meaning in life, even in the face of suffering and ordinariness. Edward Bloom's relentless creation of extraordinary narratives could be interpreted as his unique way of instilling his life with profound meaning and escaping the "existential vacuum" Frankl describes. His fear of worthlessness and mediocrity directly ties into the search for a meaningful existence. (Particularly "Logotherapy in a Nutshell" which outlines the core tenets).