A Father’s Heroic Image in a Child’s Eyes
When I was a child, in my eyes, my father was an omnipotent hero.
He had friends from all over the place. He said there was a whole company of people chasing my mother, and only he stood out. He claimed he’d never lost a fight and could take on ten bad guys with one hand…
But one day, my father rushed out to protect me with a punch and was then beaten black and blue by a few hooligans. As I cried my heart out, I suddenly realized that while my father was as brave as in his stories, the idea of taking on ten bad guys with one hand might just be a beautiful “lie”.
As we grow up, we gradually come to understand our fathers’ ordinariness. The image of our fathers as towering figures and the words we once believed in will always be shaken one day.
Today, the movie Big Fish we’re sharing tells such a story. It’s about a father who loves to brag, his fantastic experiences, and how his son goes from being unable to tolerate his “lies” to understanding him.
The Birth Story of Will
Young Will often heard his father tell a birth story about a fish and a wedding ring.
On the day Will was born, his father, Edward, used the wedding ring as bait and caught a legendary big fish. But the ring ended up in the fish’s belly. Edward chased the fish from upstream to downstream. After getting the ring back, it became Will’s best birth gift.
For many years, Edward told this story to all kinds of people. Curious children, Will’s newly – wed wife… Even at Will’s wedding, he was still repeating this strange birth story, becoming the focus of the whole audience.
Will’s Discontent
After listening to his father’s bragging for so many years, Will finally couldn’t stand it anymore. After the wedding, he had a big fight with Edward. He couldn’t understand why his father was so obsessed with telling those false stories.
Finally, his father said dejectedly, “Sorry to have upset you.”
For the next three years, they didn’t say a word to each other. Only their mother contacted Will by phone.
Edward’s Stories and Will’s Return
One day three years later, Will got the news that his father was seriously ill. On the plane rushing home, he remembered the story about the witch that Edward had told.
When he was a child, Edward and his friends visited the witch’s gloomy residence at night. It was said that if you stared into the witch’s eyeball, you could see your own death. Brave Edward was the only child who dared to knock on the door. That night, the children saw their future deaths in her glass eyeball.
Will returned home and saw his father lying in bed. Edward started telling the witch story again. Will unceremoniously exposed him, saying there was no such thing as a witch in the world, and it was impossible to see death in someone’s eyeball.
But Edward still insisted, “It’s not time yet.” He said the way he saw himself in the witch’s eyes was not to die of illness like this.
Leaving his father’s bedside, Will pushed open the door of his childhood room. At that moment, he remembered that once when he was ill in bed, his father had comforted him by saying that he himself had been bedridden for three years when he was a child.
In Edward’s legendary story, during those three years, he grew rapidly and became a star in the town with his big figure. He became a competition champion, bravely put out a fire… and even stood up for the peace of the town, conquering a giant with his wisdom and humor.
Edward and the giant became companions and agreed to go to a bigger city together to fulfill their ambitions.
Amid the farewells of the mayor and the townspeople, they left the town and started a new adventure.
Edward’s Adventure in the Ghost Town
There were two roads out of the town. One was a brand – new and flat avenue, and the other was a dark and muddy path. Brave Edward chose to walk alone on the unknown path and made an appointment with the giant to meet at the other end. After a thrilling night filled with spiders, crows, and wasps, he arrived at a place like a paradise – the Ghost Town.
This was a place with beautiful scenery, where people lived a prosperous, sweet, and care – free life. It was said that no one who came here could bear to leave.
Here, he also found the missing poet from his hometown, met a little girl who liked him, and saw a beautiful woman transformed from a big fish by the river in the moonlight…
Edward spent a happy day in the Ghost Town, but he finally understood that the life he wanted was still far away, in a bigger world. So he declined the townspeople’s persuasion to stay and decided to move on, going through hardships to fulfill his promise and meet the giant.
Edward’s Life in the Big City
Edward and the giant arrived in the big city. They had infinite yearnings for the future but were still confused.
Soon, while watching a circus performance, they both found their life missions. The giant joined the circus with his astonishing height, and Edward met the girl he loved for life.
At that moment, the whole world stood still.
Unfortunately, it was just a brief glance, and the girl disappeared into the crowd.
In the following years, in order to get some information about the girl, Edward worked hard under the circus boss who exploited his employees. Although it was hard, his heart was full of enthusiasm and sweetness. He said, “That’s my future wife. I want to spend the rest of my life with her.”
One night, kind – hearted Edward saved the circus boss who had turned into a wolf. The boss was very grateful to him and finally told Edward the girl’s name and location.
So, Edward rushed to the girl’s side regardless, telling her that he had worked for three years to find her, had been stabbed, shot, stepped on, and had his ribs broken, but it was all worth it.
Unfortunately, the girl was already engaged.
The cruelty of fate couldn’t change Edward’s will. Edward believed this was his life’s mission. He tried every means to impress the girl, changing the classroom slides into a confession, showing his love with an airplane spray, and laying out a whole flower field downstairs of the girl…
Edward’s sincerity and courage gradually moved the girl. Finally, one day, during a fight between her fiancé and Edward, she expressed her true feelings: she liked Edward. Edward married the love of his life as he wished.
Edward’s Experience in the War
However, the good times didn’t last long. Edward was conscripted into the army. In a thrilling mission, he met conjoined twin sisters who shared a pair of legs. With their help, they escaped back to the United States together.
After traveling halfway around the world, Edward managed to return to his wife’s side with great difficulty. At this time, his wife, who thought he had already died in the war, shed tears of mixed feelings. Love made them kiss each other happily again.
Will’s Complex Feelings and the Revelation
Edward’s story ended here. Will’s wife was deeply moved by this romantic story. But Will said indifferently, “None of this really happened.”
Facing his wife’s question, “Do you love your father?”, Will didn’t know how to answer.
He had complex feelings towards his father. When he was a child, his father was away more often than at home. He often thought that his father had another home or another life elsewhere. In his eyes, all the imagined things his father told were just because his father liked the interesting life elsewhere and couldn’t stand this boring home.
At his wife’s suggestion, Will finally decided to have an honest talk with his father.
Will told Edward that his father was like an iceberg whose true face he couldn’t see. He had never known what kind of person his father was because he thought his father had never told him any truth.
The wonderful experiences his father made up could only be used as bedtime stories to deceive 5 – year – old children. But Will had grown up and realized that these things couldn’t be real. And in his eyes, his father, like those stories, was interesting and touching but also very fake.
But his father said, “All the stories I told are true. I’ve been myself since I was born. If you can’t see the real me, it’s your problem, not mine!”
Will didn’t say anything more and left disappointed.
Later, his mother took Will to his father’s private office for the first time. There, Will found many things that only appeared in his father’s stories. The notice of his father’s “death” on the battlefield, the property rights book of the Ghost Town… Will suddenly realized that what his father said was not all made up.
In his father’s later stories, he worked as a salesman, met the poet who came out of the Ghost Town, and saved the Ghost Town from ruin… And the little girl in the Ghost Town still liked him and expressed her feelings to him. Of course, Edward, who deeply loved his wife, refused her.
The Truth Behind the Stories
Will went to the Ghost Town and visited the little girl. He thought there might have been an affair between his father and her. But from her, Will learned the whole story.
The little girl, now white – haired, said that to Edward, she was just an illusory person in the story. Only his wife and Will were the most important people to him, and that was his real life.
When Will rushed home, he learned that his father had suddenly had a stroke. He stayed and accompanied his father by the bedside.
During this time, the doctor asked Will if he wanted to know the real story of what happened on the day he was born.
Will was full of anticipation but heard a very ordinary and boring story: his mother was sent to the hospital at 3 pm, and the delivery was very successful. His father, Edward, was on a business trip out of town and unfortunately couldn’t witness Will’s birth.
The doctor said, “This is the real story of your birth. It’s not very interesting, is it? If I were you, I’d choose to believe the beautiful version of the fish and the wedding ring.”
Edward, who woke up in the early morning, was extremely weak and was dying. He said with difficulty, “River…” and asked Will to tell the next story: the story about how he saw his own death in the witch’s eyeball.
So, Will sat by his father’s bedside and made up a wonderful and romantic ending to his father’s life.
In the ending Will constructed, he helped his father escape from the hospital. They rushed to the river in a thrilling way. By the riverside, the people who appeared in his father’s life stories were gathered.
Every person with a fantasy color in Edward’s story: the giant, the little girl in the Ghost Town, the poet, the circus boss, the conjoined twin sisters… Everyone was there, happily waving to Edward without any sadness.
And his beloved wife was standing in the river, looking at him with a smile. Will held him and walked into the river. Edward transformed into a big fish and swam freely into the distance.
The Enduring Power of Stories
Edward died, and the real – world funeral was so ordinary.
But to Will’s surprise, all the “impossible people” in the story came to the funeral. They all really existed. It’s just that the giant wasn’t that tall, and the conjoined sisters were just twins…
Just like in the story, everyone was happily telling about his father’s life.
Edward, the storyteller, was his truest self.
He might be boastful, but as a father, he carefully prepared a unique and romantic birth story for his child. He turned his experiences into fantastic bedtime stories, creating beautiful dreams for his child, and conveying the life beliefs of courage, determination, optimism, and open – mindedness.
He turned the ordinary lives of each of his friends into beautiful legends, making them part of the story, and like the big fish he transformed into, they would be passed down forever.
Even if he kept talking until his child was thirty or forty years old, until the day he left… Whether the stories were true or not no longer mattered.
Will understood his father’s life through the stories he told, and we understand the world and ourselves through stories.
Just as Ernest Hemingway said:
Any man’s life, told truly, is like a novel.
