Olson could well be dubbed the littlest rebel. It was in seeing the DVD a second time that I noticed that many of the children exiting the school during the opening credit sequence had red clothing, as if Ray was anticipating the cultural impact that would be made almost ten years later by that generation. In looking back at Ray's films it might be argued that the function of sons is to rebel against their fathers. This may not always be a biological father but a father figure. This can be seen with Farley Granger acting against his criminal "family" in They Live by Night, as well as Jeffrey Hunter's questioning and uncertain Jesus in King of Kings. The most famous scene in Bigger than Life is of Mason's attempt to re-enact the story of Abraham and Isaac from the Old Testament. Bigger than Life can also be viewed as a companion piece to Rebel without a Cause in how Ray looks at middle class families with both hope and despair. When James Dean tells Jim Backus to "pop one" on mother Ann Doran, it's the expression of wanting to believe in patriarchal, traditional roles. Similarly, in Bigger than Life is the dichotomy of the desire for the traditional male role, as idealized by Mason, the impossibility of living up to that ideal, and the fragility of alternate solutions.

Being at cross purposes is both at the core of Ray's life as well as his films. Ray's filmography suggests the conflict between the desire for artistic expression and the approval of commercial success. There is also the shift between the collaboration with political and artistic rebels in Ray's pre-Hollywood career, followed by his early development in Hollywood under the patronage and protection of Howard Hughes, a relationship that kept Ray from being blacklisted or appearing before the House of Un-American Activities. Ray was probably keenly self-aware of the contradictions in his life and work. What a film like Bigger than Life represents is Ray's own vacillation between the comfort of the established, traditional ways of living, and the exhilaration and anxiety of finding one's own direction.