American Gods
6/10: Okay la. Upon completing the first season of the Starz series, and because I’ve read enough of Gaiman’s comics to merit this a try.
American Gods is about a recently released inmate named Shadow Moon who joins up with an old grifter on his quest when he has no life at home to return to. Except that nothing is as it seems. Shadow starts by seeing intriguing things, followed by experiencing inexplicable things, then ending by doing incredible things. It’s written as realistic fiction to start, then pivots into a fantasy novel taking place in the modern world, and then ends off as an ancient fantasy parable à la Coelho. Upon writing that last sentence, I realize that it is probably best characterized as magical realism. Packed with beautiful writing which compensates for the slower action, the reader is introduced to an ensemble of the eponymous American Gods, and carried along. I’m not sure if my reading ability is the issue here, but I think that I would have been quite confused by the plot developments if it wasn’t for the TV adaptation. An enjoyable read with a unique flavour, but unsatisfying.
To preface this, my reading of American Gods was heavily influenced by the TV series that I started, especially the appearances of the characters. Shadow is ethnically ambiguous in the novel, having darker skin, but that could mean any ethnicity, including tanned Caucasian. The actor who plays Shadow is of mixed heritage, black and white, but I have since thought of Shadow as black. The other characters also have descriptions in the novel that the TV adaptation doesn’t quite match. I recall the lighting in the TV series to be almost that of a sepia tone, which I applied to my visualization of the novel. That suited the narrative just fine. To be honest, I didn’t actually like the show that much. It was of an extremely high production quality, and some of the shots were pretty, but it felt slow. And I was confused. Much like Shadow.
But that’s not the fault of the director. Because the exposition of the novel was just as confusing. We’re placed in this fantasy world without explanation of its mechanical workings. To be fair, I’m not well versed in magical realism, but I think by not explaining the fantastical elements maintains the ‘realism’ of magical realism. Things just are as they always have been. However, the protagonist is normally in on it as well. Not in American Gods. Shadow is one of us. He has no clue what is going on, and puts the pieces together as things go. He can perform real magic, his wife is now a revenant, and the grifter he signs on with is Odin? All in a day’s work. This helps the reader sympathize with Shadow’s position, seeing that he is just as confused. It also allows for some exposition to happen, albeit in the form of questions with answers at the mercy of Odin, whenever he feels like explaining something. What a great mentor.
On the subject of great mentors, I was first taught how to write an essay in the 9th grade by a 60-year-old hippie with white hair died different colours. I was a straight-A student, so getting a B+ in her class was very disappointing. I didn’t deserve even that B+. She taught the essay form through Campbell’s hero’s journey, which is my biggest takeaway from that course, seeing as I still can’t write a decent essay, as evidenced by this rambling mess. American Gods follows the hero’s journey nearly to a T, starting with a call, and ending with Shadow returning as a changed man. Which brings me back to Odin as a mentor to Shadow. At the end of the novel, it is revealed that Odin is the antagonist, and the ‘war of the gods’ was actually a farce played by him and Loki to become stronger themselves. This makes Odin the antagonist of the piece. But he’s also Shadow’s mentor. No other story comes to mind where the mentor turns out to be the villain all along. Interesting quirk. Maybe that’s why I didn’t see it coming.
The big plot twist was that Shadow’s archetypical mentor, Odin, was the evil that to be overcome. Hints were dropped masterfully in the novel, like how all of Odin’s cons required a second person to be in on the trick. When Loki was first introduced as one of the antagonists, I thought that he would be secretly working with Odin, for the good side. I blame the Marvel franchise for that. He was working with Odin alright, but he and Odin were a faction unto themselves. Odin served as a father figure to Shadow in his journey, but he was also his biological father. He also killed Shadow’s wife. The second shoe drops quickly after the first, which I think is a sign of a good setup: the twist catches the reader unaware, but right after the fact, the reader is already berating themselves for not catching on sooner.
Another divergence that sets the story up differently is the lack of a real motive for Shadow to go on his quest. He joins for lack of anything better to do. He’s not bringing the ring to Mount Doom so he can save Middle Earth, nor is he defeating the Sith Lord to bring peace to the galaxy. His wife is dead and he’s getting paid. An alternate interpretation is that Shadow starts his hero’s journey when Odin dies, and he sacrifices himself holding vigil for Odin. His quest would be confined to the hundred pages when he is hanging from the tree. Despite the truncation, and misleading call to action, this follows the archetype better. However, either interpretation of the hero’s journey leaves the ending feeling empty because no motive is resolved.
The novel ends on a quiet note. Shadow has saved the world of the gods, but it doesn’t really feel like he has done much. The gods are as downtrodden as ever. His wife is dead for good. There is little to no bearing on the real world except for the symbolic help that Shadow was able to provide to one village. And he re-enters the world as a drifter. Not quite human, but definitely not a god either. A very flat ending.
Neil Gaiman’s American Gods subverts convention when the reader least expects it by sticking to the rules until the last minute. There is the call to action, the refusal of said call to start until the hero loses everything that’s dear to him, the emergence of a mentor, crossing the first threshold, and the road of trials. And then the twist hits out of nowhere. There are some other breaks in tradition, such as the confused magical realism protagonist, and the unmotivated protagonist which keep things interesting, but leave a lot to be desired in the central conflict and the resolution thereof.
I’m sorry for the mess that this month’s post is; I could have done a much better hero’s journey analysis, and it turned out to be just a rough outline of some of my thoughts on the novel. I read American Gods at the beginning of August, and I have been reading a lot of nonfiction this month (very uncharacteristic of me), leaving this review to the last minute (quite characteristic of me). I decided that it was better to create a badly written piece than to break the chain of writing one every month. I promise next month’s will be better written.
