Spoiler Waking up the Wind Fish

[Bowsette Plus-Ultra]

As most of us Zelda fans know, waking up the Wind Fish is the ultimate goal of Link's Awakening.

The Wind Fish itself is a godlike being slumbering atop a mountain on Koholint Island, apparently cursed to sleep by some sort of Nightmare creatures. The island itself only exists because the Wind Fish sleeps. All of its inhabitants, from the villagers to the monsters, came into existence only when the Wind Fish slipped into a comatose state and seemingly warped reality so that they could exist. The dungeon bosses themselves suggest that they only exist because of the Wind Fish and then waking the sleeping god effectively kills all of them.

So, I pose this question:

Was waking the Wind Fish up the right thing to do?

Everyone on Koholint Island is sentient. They live, they work, and they play. Even the "monsters" seem keenly aware of how their existence is tied to the Wind Fish's coma. Marin's survival during the game's "true" ending indicates that everyone on the island was very much real, their existence dictated by the Wind Fish. Given intrinsically tied they all are to the Wind Fish and how their existence depends on the Wind Fish, isn't waking up the Wind Fish effectively murdering everyone on the island?

Therefore, I suggest that the only two morally just options are as follows:

1) Let the Wind Fish slumber, never again to wake.
2) Euthanize the Wind Fish. This option assumes that the existence of Koholint Island and its inhabitants is tied more-so to the Wind Fish not waking up and less to the dream itself.

Do you guys agree? Do I seem crazy? Was I the Wind Fish the whole time?

 

[Spiritual Mask Salesman]

The Windfish wants to wake up, should the Wind Fish be denied a chance to live life because he's forced to sleep forever? Only the Nightmares want to stay in the dream, but they are nightmares, entities meant to cause fear and doubt. The other people on the Island have no idea they are in a dream, and can't even comprehend the concept when Link mentions that he is not from the Island. The one truly good person that can grasp the concept is Marin, and she urges Link to do what he can to leave.

Overall, waking the Wind Fish was the right thing to do.

 

[Bowsette Plus-Ultra]

The Windfish wants to wake up, should the Wind Fish be denied a chance to live life because he's forced to sleep forever? Only the Nightmares want to stay in the dream, but they are nightmares, entities meant to cause fear and doubt. The other people on the Island have no idea they are in a dream, and can't even comprehend the concept when Link mentions that he is not from the Island. The one truly good person that can grasp the concept is Marin, and she urges Link to do what he can to leave.

Overall, waking the Wind Fish was the right thing to do.

Unfortunately, waking up the Wind Fish seems to come at the cost of everyone on the island. Barring Marin, everyone seems to have perished upon waking the Wind Fish. Many lives were lost to wake the sleeping god.

 

[Spiritual Mask Salesman]

Unfortunately, waking up the Wind Fish seems to come at the cost of everyone on the island. Barring Marin, everyone seems to have perished upon waking the Wind Fish. Many lives were lost to wake the sleeping god.

They weren't real anyway. It's heavily implied the dream is a mixture of The Wind Fish and Link's consciousness. Marin is basically a dream version of Zelda, and since it's a dream, winning her affection is easy. It might look real, it might feel real, but it isn't.

 

[Bowsette Plus-Ultra]

They weren't real anyway. It's heavily implied the dream is a mixture of The Wind Fish and Link's consciousness. Marin is basically a dream version of Zelda, and since it's a dream, winning her affection is easy.

Yeah, but Marin is also shown in the game's ending to be real and the one occupant of the island to survive. If she was real, then it doesn't seem like much of a leap to say the other occupants are.

 

[Spiritual Mask Salesman]

Yeah, but Marin is also shown in the game's ending to be real and the one occupant of the island to survive. If she was real, then it doesn't seem like much of a leap to say the other occupants are.

As a real seagull, lol? In the original she had seagull wings, yeah. In the DX and Switch versions Link sees an image of her in the sky that fades away and a seagull flies by.

 

[baajabajao]

I'd say everything on the island except Link and the nightmares is a manifestation of the Wind Fish's imagination. So even after the dream is over, Koholint does 'exist' in its subconscious, just no-one will ever see it again. But euthanizing the Wind Fish would kill all the people of Koholint along with it, since they can't exist independently of its mind, except maybe Marin who the Wind Fish brought to life as a seagull.

 

[Bowsette Plus-Ultra]

I'd say everything on the island except Link and the nightmares is a manifestation of the Wind Fish's imagination. So even after the dream is over, Koholint does 'exist' in its subconscious, just no-one will ever see it again. But euthanizing the Wind Fish would kill all the people of Koholint along with it, since they can't exist independently of its mind, except maybe Marin who the Wind Fish brought to life as a seagull.

But if Marin is alive and flies away following the Wind Fish's wake, that suggests that all the other inhabitants of the island were similarly real, and that waking up the Wind Fish effectively murdered them.

 

[Spiritual Mask Salesman]

But if Marin is alive and flies away following the Wind Fish's wake, that suggests that all the other inhabitants of the island were similarly real, and that waking up the Wind Fish effectively murdered them.

Is Marin real?

 

[Bowsette Plus-Ultra]

Is Marin real?

She seems to be in the ending.

 

[baajabajao]

If the seagull is actually Marin, then she was granted life by the Wind Fish but she wasn't real before that.

 

[Bowsette Plus-Ultra]

If the seagull is actually Marin, then she was granted life by the Wind Fish but she wasn't real before that.

It's unclear. Since the game never makes an effort to clarify how the Wind Fish's powers work, it's just as valid that Marin was already real, conjured into existence by a sleeping Wind Fish, in which case all the other islanders were also real.

 

[baajabajao]

The carving in the Face Shrine explicitly calls the island an illusion:

THE ISLE OF KOHOLINT, IS BUT AN ILLUSION... HUMAN, MONSTER, SEA, SKY... A SCENE ON THE LID OF A SLEEPER'S EYE...

And the Wind Fish confirms that the islanders are part of the illusion:

I AM THE WIND FISH... LONG HAS BEEN MY SLUMBER... IN MY DREAMS... AN EGG APPEARED AND WAS SURROUNDED BY AN ISLAND, WITH PEOPLE, ANIMALS, AN ENTIRE WORLD! ... ... ... ... BUT, VERILY, IT BE THE NATURE OF DREAMS TO END! WHEN I DOST AWAKEN, KOHOLINT WILL BE GONE... ONLY THE MEMORY OF THIS DREAM LAND WILL EXIST IN THE WAKING WORLD... SOMEDAY, THOU MAY RECALL THIS ISLAND... THAT MEMORY MUST BE THE REAL DREAM WORLD...

I don't think there's any reason not to take this at face value, both of these texts clearly refer to the game's world as a dream of the Wind Fish. It's an illusion that exists only in the mind of the person observing it ('scene on the lid of a sleeper's eye'). The only difference from an ordinary dream is that Link is transported into the dream. So he can influence events in the dream and carries memories of it with him in the real world afterwards.

The ending with Marin and the seagull could be interpreted as Link recalling his memories of Marin. Since Koholint existed only in the minds of Link and the Wind Fish, having the memory of it is as good as having the island itself. Looking at the seagulls triggers Link's memory of Marin, bringing her back to life in as real a sense as she ever existed in.
Or if that doesn't make sense to you, maybe the Wind Fish puts the part of his subconscious that was represented by Marin into a seagull. But this would mean the Wind Fish is creating a new life out of his own. There's no killing involved if he leaves Marin within his subconscious.