Black-And-White Tie Sequence

As the murder sequence begins, Ed shoves his wife into a closet to preclude her from stopping him from committing filicide. During this sequence, Ed is also notably dressed in a black-and-white suit with an atypically longer tie: throughout the majority of the film, Ed wears a bowtie, whenever he is captured wearing any form of a tie. The formality of typically wearing the bowtie is eradicated throughout this sequence, as Ed is dressed more-so like the doctors earlier in the film, especially similarly to Dr. Norton in the hospital scene where the doctors reveal Ed’s condition to him and his wife towards Bigger Than Life’s beginning. Frequently dressing himself in the bowtie might be suggestive of Ed showcasing his grandiose perception

Other elements of the sequence are suggestive of the hopes and aspirations Ed once held to evade the mundane and dull of his suburban lifestyle, such as the travel posters that are seen hanging throughout the family’s walls, especially nearby the household’s critical staircase. In wearing this distinct attire, Ed succumbs to conformity, but is also prepared for his death, as his clothing simultaneously seems suitable for signifying conformity to suburbia and for a funeral: his dreams and aspirations are, too, dead. In a scene prior to the murder sequence beginning, Ed alludes to his intentions of committing murder-suicide, when he says to Lou, “Well, I hadn’t planned to go on living. Do you?” In declaring such, Ed’s announcement of no longer seeking to go on living helps affirm that his clothing is suggestive of being prepared for his own death, along with the death of his grandiose aspirations deriving from the confidence the cortisone supplies him with. Ed’s stylistic clothing shift throughout the murder sequence, ultimately, hints at his mental state’s faltering and suggests how greatly the anti-hero has