Will Bloom
Will Bloom initially dismisses his father Edward Bloom’s extraordinary adventure tales as mere boasting and sets out to uncover the truth. But as his father’s death approaches and he meets old friends from the past, he comes to realize his father’s stories were not lies but ‘stories’ — the most beautiful packaging of every moment and act of love in the life his father lived. Will’s journey poses the profound question of which holds more value: ‘truth’ or ‘story.’
From Truth-Seeker to Narrative Acceptor: Will Bloom’s Character Arc
Will Bloom serves as the audience’s surrogate gaze, driving the film’s narrative. When confronted with his father Edward Bloom’s adventure tales, he immediately dismisses everything as exaggerated, invented ‘boasting.’ For Will, clear facts and evidence matter, and he has a strong desire to judge his father’s life by objective record.
1. Early Stage: Skepticism and Truth-Tracking
Early in the film, Will finds his father’s stories far too unrealistic. A giant, a witch, a werewolf circus ringmaster — to him these are nothing more than ‘grandiose lies’ his father has constructed to comfort himself as death approaches. Will works to find the real record of his father’s life — the ‘truth.’ In this process he adopts a detective-like attitude, questioning his father’s stories and playing the key role of challenging them.
This doubt is concretized in the action of digging deep into the attic to find ‘evidence’ from within his father’s lies. Will combines the clues his father left behind, trying to reconstruct his father’s life — but what he searches for is confined to physical evidence.
2. The Turning Point: Meeting Old Friends
What brings a decisive change in Will’s perspective is the encounter at his father’s funeral. There he meets old friends from his father’s past. This encounter begins to collapse the tower of belief in ‘truth’ Will had built over the years.
The friends show that his father’s stories were not complete lies — that the father had merely taken real experiences as the basis, extended them into ‘story,’ and polished them beautifully. The root of the adventure tales lay in the father’s real experiences and genuine feelings. Will comes to realize for the first time that his father’s life exists on the boundary between ‘fact’ and ‘story.’
3. Acceptance and Completion: The Power of Story
Ultimately Will comes to accept his father’s adventure tales not as a ‘substitute for truth’ but as ‘the way of defining what his father was.’ The boasting was the most effective and beautiful way his father protected himself and passed love to his son. The father completes his life as one grand narrative, and realizes that narrative itself is the most important legacy to leave his son.
In the film’s final scene, the way Will listens to his father’s story symbolizes that he has become a mature young man who no longer seeks to excavate his father’s ‘truth’ but loves and understands his father’s ‘story.’ Will’s growth presents to the audience an answer to the question ‘What is life?’ — that the most important value is not objective fact but the ‘love and memory’ that envelops those facts.
Why It Matters
Will Bloom’s character arc is the film’s thematic consciousness itself. The film revolves around two axes — ‘truth’ and ‘story’ — and Will serves as the audience’s surrogate caught in the conflict between them. His early characterization as a son who dismisses his father’s tales as ‘boasting’ reflects the modern tendency to value only objective, verifiable ‘truth.’ But when he ultimately accepts his father’s stories as ‘a way of loving,’ the film argues that ‘real life’ is not a perfectly documented recitation of facts but the warm narrative that wraps all the adventures, love, and everything else in its embrace. Will’s growth delivers the film’s warmest and most profound message.
Other Character dives5
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Ed Bloom (young)
Ed Bloom (young) is a storyteller who has lived his whole life for adventure, with an extraordinary gift for wrapping his experiences in tall tales. Rather than simply recalling the past, he makes his very existence into one grand narrative. His legendary life poses for son Will the fundamental question of the boundary between ‘truth’ and ‘story,’ driving the film’s core themes.
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Ed Bloom (senior)
Ed Bloom (senior) is a dying father and a storyteller seeking to complete his life as one grand narrative. He tells his son extraordinary tales beginning with ‘Back in my day...’ — stories that are not mere lies but the most beautiful way of defining one person’s existence and love. His stories dissolve the boundary between truth and fiction and serve as the core device for exploring the meaning of life.
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Sandra Bloom (mother)
Sandra Bloom is the central anchor of the family sustaining Ed Bloom’s life, and the most pivotal figure navigating the boundary between fantasy and reality. As the listener to her husband’s extraordinary adventure tales, she dismantles the criteria for ‘truth’ that son Will pursues and ultimately serves as the emotional anchor that assigns value to ‘story’ itself.
Back to the title
Big Fish
13 deep dives in total