85 pages • 2 hours read
Daniel WallaceBig Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1998A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Water
From his first moments on Earth, Edward appears to be in commune with water. His birth brings rain during the drought, his childhood brings snow to Alabama for the first time, and many of the most important moments of his life take place in, or near, water. This alleged influence over an element helps show Edward's remarkable powers of influence.
Water's importance foreshadows the final transformation Edward undertakes, in which he physically becomes the thing he'd always wished to be—a big fish. When he comes home to die, Edward swims in the backyard pool every day, as though, in the face of his inability to leave the house, it's an act of self-preservation. In each of William's versions of Edward's death, he asks for a glass of water, building up to the novel's final scene, when he directs William to drive him to a river.
"Big Fish"
In a play on the idiom 'big fish in a small pond,' Edward expresses his lifelong desire to be a "big fish in a big pond" (21). He pursues this goal of being a remarkable person in the worldby leaving the small town in which he grew up, and continuously seeking out adventures in his adult life.
Another association with the phrase 'big fish' are the fishing stories in which the size of the fish caught increases with each retelling. This practice echoes the style in which Edward, and later others, tell their stories about his life. With each telling, distances get longer, things get bigger, and dogs get fiercer, to the point that the original story can't be discerned.
Lastly, in a sense that blurs the metaphoric and literal, Edward possesses superhuman fishlike qualities. For example, both times in his life that he's been underwater for extended periods of time, he doesn't drown. Instead, he finds he's able to breathe. In the novel's last scene, his body transforms from decaying human to flopping fish.
Eyes
Eyes hold significance for both William and Edward. William pays special attention to the eyes of those around him, sensing their exhaustion, resignation, relief, and, in the case of Edward, nearness to death. When Edward suffers a near-death experience while falling from their home's roof, he uses a wink to let William know that he survived the fall. Later, when Edward is in a comatose state, William hopes to see his father wink and let him know that he's alright.
Edward has an early encounter with a prophetic glass eye that determines his relationship with William's mother. He, and Jenny Hill, are both described as having eyes that glow—Edward when he's home and bored, and Jenny when she sits in the house in Specter, waiting for Edward's return. This superhuman trait seems fitting for both of them, as the novel presents their relationship as somehow fated.
