Big Fish: Motifs | SparkNotes

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Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

Travel

Even as a child, Edward dreams of travel. After he leaves Ashland, he encounters “the place that has no name.” Not many escape this place, but Edward does. Unlike the others who get stuck in the residue of their dreams in this strange, deadly town, Edward is able to move on. According to Will, his itinerant father hates to stay in one place. Edward lives in “a state of constant aspiration” and uses home not as a place to live but as a location to refuel. After Will’s birth, Edward travels more and more until he relocates his heart to a dream-like town called Specter. Edward finally returns home and stops traveling once he’s ill with cancer. According to Will, the worst part of being sick for Edward is staying in one place. Will resents Edward’s wanderlust and wants a father who stays home and pays attention to him. Finally, Will gets what he wants, but only because Edward becomes ill. In the end, Edward gets his wish to continue to travel endlessly, but not on land. He swims in a river as a mythical fish who travels forever.

Telling Jokes

Jokes are Edward’s language, and often, he tells them at inappropriate times. He claims that “laughter is the best medicine” even as his life sinks slowly into deepening sadness. Edward tells jokes about two-headed sisters, the guest room in the house, and Jesus and Pinocchio. He tells jokes about doctors, metaphors, the milkman who may have been his father, dead cats, grasshoppers, and an ill-fitting suit. At one point, Will jokes about making a compilation of Edward Bloom’s Collected Jokes. When Will and Edward finally discuss their relationship, and Edward asks Will to tell him what it is he’s taught him about life, Will responds with a joke. This is Will’s way of telling his father that everything between them is good. Even though Will wishes he had known Edward better and had spent more time with him, in this moment of truth, Will tells his father a joke. Because Edward loves jokes so much, Will telling him a joke is the best gift he can give his father at the end of his life. The joke shows that Will is no longer pushing back. He not only accepts his father’s sense of humor but he also mimics it, an action that shows respect and love.

Water and Swimming

In Big Fish, water represents transition. Sometimes, the transition is birth or death. Other times, it represents a mysterious change from one state to another. On the day of Edward’s birth, a drought ends with rain, suggesting that Edward has the power to change the weather. Another time, Edward is pulled underwater by a giant catfish. There, he sees and waves at people who have drowned in the lake. As Jenny Hill deteriorates, her house turns into a swamp, full of mud, despair, and fear. After Edward becomes sick, he swims daily in his backyard pool, but the water turns against him and becomes green and swampy. As Edward lies dying, he often asks for drinks of water and pours water on himself as he and Will take their last drive. At the novel’s climax, Edward chooses to “die” in a river, but the water changes him from human to fish as he swims away.