Nicole McLellan - Stories and Facts

While I was reading over a few Big Fish essays, I came across a quote that really stood out to me and made me think a little more about the relationship between Edward Bloom and his son. In his essay, Aaron McLellan writes, “If Will had tried to interpret who his father was through the stories and not through dry facts, he would have had a fulfilling relationship with his father, but Will only knows how to look at the stories in his perspective.” In the film, Will was so caught up in trying to figure out whether his father’s stories were true, that he missed out on actually having a fulfilling relationship with him. His father was revealing who he was through his stories in a way that mere fact could never do; his stories brought to life the real emotions and experiences he had and helped to show who he truly was as a person.

When I initially read Aaron’s description of this relationship, I had to stop and reread it because I just hadn’t thought about it that way before. Maybe it was the way he worded it, but after rereading it I could not help but think of religion and the struggle that many people go through in deciding whether they believe in some form of God or not. I guess the religion that comes to the forefront of my mind is Christianity. It seems that many people regard the Bible as just stories; they find it hard to believe that God even exists, let alone that the Bible is His Word. Maybe it’s the idea of human error that comes into play, the fact that the Bible was physically written down by mere men, not an actual divine being. I guess I was thinking that if God does exist, then maybe regardless of whether these biblical stories are actual fact, they might reveal more truth about who He is and what He is like than if we were given just facts. I’m not suggesting that we just throw logic and reason out the window. It just seems that it might be possible to become so focused on trying to figure out the facts about God’s existence that we can miss out on having a relationship with Him altogether.