American Gods

The carousel begins to vanish as Shadow, Wednesday, Czernobog, and Mr. Nancy ride it. Shadow is surprised when his mount seems to come alive and run into the encroaching darkness. As they pass through a kaleidoscopic vision, Shadow looks across at Mr. Nancy. As well as his human form, Mr. Nancy also seems to be an enormous, “jeweled spider,” as well as a giant man with eight arms, a small boy, and a tiny spider. In this strange place, Shadow intrinsically understands that all these entities are Mr. Nancy. Czernobog tells him that “none of this is truly happening” (94). As they ride, Wednesday comes close to Shadow and reveals that his real name is Odin, the “all-father.” The men ride toward Valaskjalf which is where Odin once lived, now created inside Wednesday’s mind. There, Wednesday is disappointed to find that only 10 guests have accepted his invitation. Mr. Nancy tries to deal with the awkward moment by telling a story about the time he stole the testicles from a tiger. The moral of the story is this: “just because you’re small, doesn’t mean you got no power” (96).

Wednesday stands up to talk to his guests, gods who came to America with the immigrants who believed in them. As successive generations lost connection to their homelands, the belief in the gods faded, and these gods are now a diminished force, facing extinction. Now, they get by with whatever scant belief or memory remains. They exist “in the cracks at the edges of society” (97) and are being replaced by the new gods, including the internet, the telephone, and the freeway. The new gods want to destroy the old gods, so Wednesday believes that the old gods must fight back. A woman named Mama-ji, dressed in a red sari, steps forward. She dismisses Wednesday’s proposal as she believes that the interest in the new gods is only a temporary issue. They, like the railroad, will eventually become irrelevant. No agreement is reached.

When the light burns out, the characters return to the room with the carousel. They leave to find somewhere to eat. Shadow drives Mama-ji and several other gods to a diner. His passengers include a man who believes that he is Elvis Presley and a strange man who Shadow can’t remember, no matter how hard he tries. After dropping the others off, Shadow parks the car. When he enters the diner, he is struck on the head and tied up. He is taken to a small room, and while sitting alone, he practices his coin tricks. In the early hours of the morning, two men in suits enter the room and introduce themselves as Mr. Wood and Mr. Stone from the “private sector.” They interrogate Shadow about Wednesday, and when he gives an answer they do not like, they beat him. After some time, they leave and promise to return shortly.

In agony, Shadow lies on the ground and holds the protective silver dollar tight in his hand. As he falls asleep, he thinks about his mother. Shadow wakes up to find Laura in front of him. The gold coin he threw into her grave hangs around her neck on a chain. Laura has killed the guards, and she is covered in their blood. She explains that killing people is easier “when you’re dead yourself” (105). She gives Shadow his clothes and some supplies and hurries him out of the cell but does not answer his questions. She is able to find him because he stands out like “a beacon in a dark world” (106). Shadow asks Laura what she wants, and she says she wants “to be alive again” (107). Shadow does not know how to grant this wish. Laura knows that he will figure out what to do, and she vanishes.

Shadow stumbles through a forest and worries that he is lost. He sees “a black bird the size of a small dog” (109) eating the corpse of a baby deer. The bird looks up at him and addresses him as “shadow man.” Instinctively, Shadow recognizes the bird as one of Odin’s folkloric ravens. The raven tells him to follow the Mississippi River to find someone named Jackal in Kay-ro. Shadow follows the instructions, eventually reaching a town and buying a cheap car “with a full tank of gas” (111). He rides toward Cairo in Illinois. When he pulls over to sleep, he dreams about a man with a buffalo head who warns about a coming storm. Someone taps on the window and wakes Shadow—a young woman named Sam, who is hitchhiking to El Paso, Illinois. She rides with Shadow, who takes pity on her. He pays for her lunch and correctly guesses that she is a liberal arts student who works in a coffee house. While eating, they discuss Laura, Illinois, and Sam’s teenage nephew, who disappeared the previous year.

While driving, they talk about Greek historians. Shadow learned about Herodotus from his cellmate, Low Key, and now he explains to Sam Herodotus’s theory about how gods could live in the mortal world periodically. Sam is perplexed. She tells a story about a king in Scandinavia who sacrificed himself to earn a strong wind for his people’s voyages. Sam, who is part Indigenous American, mocks the gods of “white people.” After Shadow drops Sam in El Paso, he continues toward Cairo. He makes a brief stop in a motel, where the television seems to blur together classic sitcoms until a character from I Love Lucy is sitting in the room with Shadow. Lucy is actually one of the new gods, and she wants to talk to Shadow. She offers him a job, but he declines. He resents that the new gods seem to “speak in cliches” (121). The next day, Shadow arrives in Cairo. He performs a coin trick for a young girl and feels himself being watched by a cat and a “long-muzzled black dog” (122). The dog makes a sarcastic comment about the quality of Shadow’s trick and is joined by the tall Mr. Ibis, who introduces the dog as Mr. Jacquel. Together, Ibis and Jacquel run the local funeral parlor.

In a Coming to America interlude, a man named Salim comes to the United States from Oman. He works for his brother-in-law, Fuad, selling trinkets in New York City. He struggles and feels worthless, “painfully aware” that he has not sold enough. One night, he enters a “battered yellow taxi” (126) driven by an unnamed Arab man. Salim is relieved to speak to someone from a similar background. He lists the many problems in his life. When the driver falls asleep, Salim wakes him up and knocks his sunglasses from his face. Instead of eyes, he has burning fires. Salim knows that the driver is an ifrit or jinn, a type of spirit from the Middle East that can supposedly “grant wishes.” They reach the hotel where Salim lives, and he tells the jinn his room number and hands over $20. The next day, the jinn waits for Salim in the lobby of the hotel. They go to Salim’s room and have sex. In the morning, Salim wakes up to find the jinn is gone, along with all of Salim’s personal possessions. Salim takes the driver’s ID cards and leaves the hotel to “go and look for his cab” (130).

Shadow helps out at the “small, family-owned funeral home” (131). Ibis writes the “accounts of lives” (132) while Jacquel guides people to the land of the dead. Ibis also writes the stories Coming to America stories that appear throughout the novel. After originally coming into being thousands of years ago in Ancient Egypt, Ibis and Jacquel were brought to America by Egyptian believers who died and left their gods behind on the continent. They found a niche for themselves by organizing the funerals of African Americans in the post-Civil War society. Their fellow Egyptian gods left Cairo, Illinois, many years before. Jacquel and a “small brown cat” (136) are all that remain. The cat shows a special affection toward Shadow. When he shaves in front of a mirror and experiences suicidal thoughts, the cat interrupts to save him.

Dressed in a “good quality” used suit, Shadow goes with Ibis and Jacquel to collect a body. As they travel, Shadow asks Jacquel about the existence of souls. Jacquel talks about his fellow Egyptian god Ammet, who weighed people’s souls after they died. If they did not pass the test, Ammet ate both their heart and their soul. The conversation turns to Wednesday’s war between old and new gods. Ibis believes that his and Jacquel’s time in America is nearly up. They have done better than most of the old gods, saving for the “lucky, lucky” Jesus. Jacquel sees nothing to be gained from waging war with the new gods. That night, Shadow dreams about sex with a woman in a leopard print skirt. He wakes up without any clothes on, but his body has completely healed, aside from fresh “claw marks” down his back.

While walking through Cairo, Shadow runs into Mad Sweeney. The leprechaun is horrified because he supposedly gave Shadow the wrong coin. The magic coin that Shadow threw in Laura’s grave was reserved solely for “the King of America himself” (146). He admits that the fight in the bar was a test, organized by Wednesday, to evaluate Shadow’s capabilities. Sweeney begs Shadow to return the coin. When Shadow admits that he no longer has the coin, the leprechaun is despondent. He urges Shadow not to trust Wednesday. Shadow gives Sweeney $20 to leave town. On December 23, however, Shadow is called to bring Sweeney’s dead body to the funeral parlor. Sweeney was found with an empty green bottle nearby.

He takes Sweeney back to the funeral parlor, and Sweeney recovers just enough to ask Shadow for a “stinking drunk” funeral. He blames Shadow for his death. Later, Ibis, Jacquel, and Shadow hold a wake for Sweeney. Ibis reads Sweeney’s life story, beginning 3,000 years ago in Ireland where he guarded a sacred stone. He traveled to America in the mind of a young Irish immigrant girl. The dead Sweeney speaks up from the morgue, filling in “details and irrelevancies” (152) in the story. The dead Sweeney teaches Shadow how to take magic gold coins from the hidden leprechaun “hoard.” The next day, Shadow wakes up to find Wednesday in the funeral parlor. As they leave Cairo, a hawk watches over them.