Previous Next

Will is the realist to his father Edward’s fantasies. He is always begging Edward to be more serious, more straightforward, and to stop telling and retelling his foolish jokes. Readers don’t learn much about Will’s life other than through his relationship with Edward, so it’s unknown if he changes much from the novel’s beginning to end. Readers do learn that Will finally makes some peace with Edward’s strange personality, and he gladly helps Edward transform as the novel ends. Will is confident and compassionate, but readers never learn what he does for a living or what relationships aside from those with his parents he may have.

Will has a solid relationship with his mother Sandra, revealed in the four “takes” on his father’s death, but he differs from his mother in terms of his relationship with Edward.  Unlike his mother, Will wants his father to be different. He does not accept Edward’s eccentricities. Neither does he accept his father’s impending death, for he knows that it will rob him of the reconciliation he craves. Despite being the narrator, Will remains mysterious. It is as if he doesn’t have a life beyond his father. His father is the big fish, and Will is the smaller one, always overshadowed and outdone by his father’s clever antics.

Previous section Edward Bloom Next section Jenny Hill

Take a Study Break