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Up next is a long one so brace yourself.
First off, let me ask you a question. Have you ever watched the movie Big Fish starring Ewan McGregor? It might be easier to understand if you do.
In Big Fish, Ewan McGregor played a character that love to tell stories. And all of his stories are always whimsical, fantastical and even magical. His son who is distanced from him never really understood his father nor his penchant for fantasy. Until after his father's funeral, when he sees that behind every fantasy his father told, there were hints of truth that weren't so magical.
So back to What Remains of Edith Finch. Let's start with who was telling the stories? It was Edith Finch herself, but we should know that she most probably has heard those stories from Edie Finch herself before they left. Especially the stories about Edie's daughters and sons. And the way Edie told those stories left some influence as to how Edith view other stories.
Next let's analyze Edie herself. From the hints in Edie's room, we can assume that she most likely suffers from schizophrenia. Basically she can't or won't differ fantasy from reality, just like Ewan's character in the movie Big Fish. She claim her husband Sven of being killed by a dragon, when it was actually an accident involving a dragon-shaped slide. Or claimed that there's a moleman living under the house when it was her son Walter being a shut-in in the basement. Note that Dawn was furious for that interview.
Therefore, I'd say that Edie is an unreliable narrator. And therefore all her stories and her influence on Edith's stories should be taken with a grain of salt.
So let's see each of the Finch family members then:
Molly died of food poisoning, a tube of tooth paste and several holly can be fatal for a child. And after she ate those she had hallucination and wrote it down. Her writing is full of childish fantasy but it's easy to understand once you reexamine her room afterward. She loved to play make believe, there are owl and cat masks hanging on bathroom door, there's a shark doll on the shelf, and a jellyfish doll with tentacles on her bed.
This incident would have pushed Edie into depression and starts her behavior of believing in fantasy to alleviate her guilt. That's because she felt guilty for punishing Molly by sending her to bed without supper. Btw, Molly was probably being punished for climbing that big tree.
100% of Odin story would have came from Edie herself. So whether Odin really believe in family curse or it was Edie's invention no one knows. But one major thing to note here is of Odin moving the whole original house all the way from Norway to Orca island in Washington.
It seems implausible because they would have to travel across Atlantic Ocean, all the way south to Panama Canal, then north again to Washington. Whether it was the writers team who overlooked the problem, or it was to show that the house-shaped structure in the sea might not be what it seems, I'm not sure. But I'll try to take this into account later.
There's not much fantasy to Calvin's story, it's easily understandable that Calvin died from a swing accident.
Still there's one thing we should note here, Sam said that Calvin would rather died before eating another mushroom. And at the time, Edie called her children for dinner. Question is, was there perhaps mushrooms in the dinner? Would this incident caused Edie to further blamed herself for her children's death?
Barbara's death is clearly an unsolved murder case. But what happened left a mark on Walter, causing him to develop agoraphobia.
And it might also cause Edie to blame herself for leaving her 2 children alone in the house at the time. Even though it was because Sven having an accident.
He became a shut-in because witnessing Barbara's murder. The monster he imagined under his cave was the train that ran on schedule for years. Until it stopped. He thought it was a monster because both the train and Barbara murder happen at the same time, right at midnight.
I can't be sure whether Walter died because of being hit by the train or other reason. Because no one knows for certain whether the train stops running because of broken track (and therefore couldn't have hit Walter), or the track was broken after the incident.
But we know that he loved train models, so it might also be that he looked for the train and fall off the cliff. Or he might not have die after all, and just gone missing. Who knows, unless someone dig his grave on the hill.
From these stories, we can see that there are always logical explanation to their death. But at the same time, these incidents would have caused Edie as their mother to feel guilty toward what happened to her children. Perhaps she invented the story of family curse to lessen her guilt?
Let's continue with Dawn's family:
Sam and Dawn is not like Edie. They're practical and logical, therefore their stories and stories from their perspectives are very straight forward. Additionally, Edith never heard of Sam's story from anyone else. Perhaps Dawn forbids Edie to tell them. So there's no Edie's influence happening here. In short, Sam died of a hunting accident.
This story is important. It seems playful, but this story is told by Sam to Kay, his ex wife, in a soft manner to prevent her from taking Edie's path.
Essentially, Gregory died of drowning because he was left unattended in the bath. Like Edie, Kay took the incident pretty hard and blamed herself for talking too long in a phone call.
Also straight forward, he hated the wedding, played kite by himself, very stubborn that he didn't want to go in even when the storm is brewing. Instead of the tent, he probably took a shelter near the trees and died from the falling totem.
The last two on the list are Dawn's children. What happened to them shaped the condition of the Finch house and her decision to leave.
Milton is missing, but the developers said that his story was actually portrayed in another game The Unfinished Swan, a PS exclusive game. There are correlation between the two, but since I have only watched the let's play, instead of playing it directly, a lot of it is going to be guess work.
But taking from this game alone I'd say Milton love wandering. The flipbook he made showed him stepping into magical door. At the same time, Milton drawing is found inside every secret passages in the house. I think those are the magical door he meant.
Beyond that there are couple of levels in The Unfinished Swan that probably portrays Milton getting lost in the woods. Perhaps even him died of drowning. But like I said it's all guess work. Other than that I can't be sure. I'll try to explain it in another post maybe.
But note the effect of Milton's missing on Dawn. She started to seal every doors in the house. There are a couple of reasons for her to do so. First, to prevent Edith from following Milton's behavior and playing in the secret passages. Second, to prevent her children from seeing the shrine Grandma Edie made for all who passed away.
Also note that Walter's room wasn't sealed. That's because Walter was still living under the basement after Milton missing. His room wasn't sealed in case he gets better from being a shut-in and can be moved upstairs. Even after Walter's escape the room still didn't get sealed, either because he's still alive or because Dawn sees that Edith has taken a liking to play in the room. But still the secret passage in the room was directly locked by Dawn herself.
Lewis had the same symptoms with Edie. He can't differ fantasy from reality. And in the end choose the fantasy and took his own life.
Dawn clearly see the correlation, between Edie's story telling and its effect on both her children. As you see, Milton love of wandering could also because he love imagining stuff.
After what happened with Lewis, Dawn decided that it's enough, Edie's fantasy addled stories are dragging her children away from reality. And we can see that in how Edith told the story as well, that it too had an influence on her.
And here we are, the last story:
After everything that's said, can we take Edie's writing as it is? That the sea receded so far, that she walked to the house in the middle of the sea, or even that there's a house sunk in the middle of the sea?
As I said, it might be implausible that they moved the original house all the way there. I personally can't be sure whether the house shape Edith saw with the telescope was really a house or just Edith's imagination. But here's what I think might have happened.
The 'house' Edie told them was actually a symbol of her father Odin. And in one of the night where Edie lost her lucidity, she walked directly into the sea between the border of fantasy and reality. It wasn't the fog that cause her to get turned around. But it was a wave pushing her back to the shore. She fainted and fantasized of reaching the old house. Of someone (Odin) turning on the light waiting for her.
See the correlation here? Dawn is having her third child on the same night. Clearly she's old enough to understand what happened and what her grandmother might try to do. It was an attempted suicide caused by her fantasy overriding her reality. And later on, she saw directly the same thing that happened to her son. Is it any wonder as to why she thought Edie's story as dangerous?
There are a lot of people with mental problems among Finches, and those who don't show them, still act irresponsibly.
Barbara's murder might be mysterious, but it clearly happened inside the Finch house - most often people don't get murdered in their home, unless to a relative, acqaintance, or due to a lapse of judgment.
Sam thought it was a good idea to make her little daughter shoot a deer, and then thought it'd be safe to grab it by the antlers near a cliff.
Molly might've been just a kid, but symptoms of holly berry or fluoride (common ingredient of early XX century toothpaste) poisoning, being quite serious and horrifying, don't have hallucinating among them. I don't know how she would actually react, but it isn't hard to assume she'd at least cry of pain she'd be suffering. Edie could clearly hear her when she asked to come out.
Dawn - well, we don't know what happened to Dawn. There are plenty neurological diseases that require hospitalization and can kill you. Ultimately, her story is the most vague one.
The way I see it now, the "curse" might be one or more genetic afflictions that hurt your mental health considerably. In that sense, Edie's stories could have very well made them worse, but ultimately, those people weren't getting proper medical attention, save for Lewis, who actively pushed his psychologist away in favor of his fantasies. And recurring genetic diseases are often referred to as curses in dynasties.
One question stays, though - even if Dawn considered Edie dangerous to Edith (as well as the house itself, given she sealed most of the rooms), why did she give the key to the passages to her daughter? What happened that changed her mind? Edie's death? Her stories were clearly all there, as were the sealed rooms. Why was sending her pregnant daughter there, without any control or mediation of the information she'd get from there, suddenly a good idea?
I'd even argue that in a way her sealing up those doors had became her own personal ritual of grief and letting go. Why else would she came back on her own to seal Lewis and Edie's door? The clue was there, the front fence was climbed before Edith came. While Lewis door might be sealed in the week after funeral before they left, it's highly improbable for her to seal Edie's door in a hurry at that last night, therefore it must have been after they left.
And who else would have arranged Edie's funeral, or having her tombstone chiseled?
Because she's sentimental, it's possible that she changed her mind in her deathbed and decided that it's time for Edith to learn the truth.
Edie wasn't dead when they left. Dawn expected for Edie to be taken to the nursing home the next morning.
But that's exactly your answer. For dramatic purposes, we see Dawn and Edith drive away, never to come back. In reality, Dawn must have been called as Edie's next of kin once the nursing home workers found Edie's body the next day. So Dawn and Edith immediately came back, Dawn arranged the funeral and burial, and sealed the last door (without touching anything else in the house, which is also possibly to be taken as poetic license, because she wasn't leaving in a hurry anymore, she could have easily retrieved their partially packed belongings and gotten rid of their last dinner's leftovers and such).
As for the climbed fence, I can't tell what that's supposed to mean. But Dawn didn't have to climb the fence, she must still have the key to her house. (In fact, it's not clear why Edith doesn't have any key other than the secret passage key, for a house of which she's now the legal owner).
Dawn was definitely not 100% pragmatic. And most people would have felt like it was Edith's right to find about her family history. Dawn's pragmatism ultimately was not believing that there was any curse, and believing her now adult daughter to be stronger than the family history and Edie's stories. Indeed, it's crucial that she thought about protecting Edith while she was still a child, but then let her come back when she wasn't a little kid anymore.
As for your other, often insightful posts, I don't believe Edie had schizophrenia, nor any other mental illness. For one thing, it's cheap, it's overused, and it would propugnate the misguided idea that mentally ill people are dangerous. She was just an eccentric old lady with an active imagination. She was perfectly capable of knowing the dragon wasn't a real dragon, but it was more magical, and soothing, to think that it was. And she knew her son Walter was "the moleman", she would visit him and bring him supplies regularly. The moleman story just repainted the reality in a more fantastical, more bearable light. Edie was an artist, not a madwoman. Artists filter reality through their viewpoint. If anything, most Finch stories are about extremely creative people struggling to come to term with the dullness of everyday life.
It's easy to see Edie as the villain of the piece. It was Dawn's take for a while (although, I believe, not at the beginning, when Edith said they "were close", nor at the end, when Dawn was possibly eager for adult Edith to reconnect with Edie's stories). But the stories weren't all Edith's. The deaths weren't all because of the stories. More crucially, Edith would have died in childbirth even if she had never read the diaries (some believe it was due to all the climbing and overexertion she did in the house, but she wasn't advanced enough in her pregnancy for that to be an issue).
Ultimately, there was no curse. There was a house, a strange and magnificent house that was simultaneously scary and infinitely fascinating. The rest is just life. Cruel, beautiful, tragic, nonsensical, inescapable life.