Big Fish speaks of truth and eternity

Rating: Null/10 (11 January 2007)

Big Fish is quirky, funny, and deeply moving with significant literary merit. If you understand how authors use symbols and metaphors to convey meaning, you'll have a rich viewing experience.
BF deals with profound questions: 1) what is truth? 2) Is man eternal? 1)The story revolves around a father who uses "tall tales" to communicate truth to his son. As his son grows up, he believes all the tall tales were total fabrications, creating alienation between them. By the end,(spoiler warning) the son is transformed, and is able to use the "tall tale" format himself to communicate truth. This brings reconciliation (he also discovers they were not a total fabrication). The message: truth is more than "information." Narration can convey profound truth in addition to narrative truth. In this respect, it is much like a Biblical parable. The parables are not historical truth, but they are truth nonetheless. Moral truth can be conveyed via narrative invention. In this sense it is what some modern critics call "myth." On another level, this aspect of the tale is a metaphor for what all authors of fiction do.
2) The "big fish" symbolizes the eternal part of the father. (Spoiler warning) As he prepares to die, he goes to the river--i.e., the boundary between this world and the next. As his son drops him into the water, he morphs into a fish, i.e., the physical part of him disappears and the eternal part is released. There is a tremendous amount of water-river-fish imagery, all of which points to the eternal part of man. He has two encounters or visions of partially-clad women in the water, symbolic of his wife's eternal nature ("my girl in the water"). This is not gratuitous nudity, but a vision of marital intimacy with the one person to whom the hero is powerfully committed for life, and an acknowledgment of her eternal nature.