60 pages • 2 hours read
Neil GaimanAmerican Gods
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Shadow Moon
Shadow is the protagonist of American Gods, but he remains inscrutable throughout the novel. After three years in prison, Shadow has learned to keep his thoughts to himself. He refuses to engage in arguments, discussions, and sometimes even conversations because he believes that doing so only leads to more trouble. He performs coin tricks to stop his mind from thinking about anything difficult. This unwillingness to engage with the world around him makes Shadow seem detached and apart from everyone else. Numerous characters comment on his quietness and his disconnection from others; they act surprised when Shadow expresses an interesting or intellectual thought, as they often dismiss his silence as stupidity. Shadow’s detachment from the world is an example of his relentless and occasionally misplaced rationality. Shadow believes that his refusal to engage with people is a rational position, just like his refusal to believe in the supernatural. As he learns over the course of the novel, however, he cannot remain detached forever. Eventually, the world seeks him out and forces him to engage, even if he does not want to do so. Even his coin tricks eventually betray him, bringing him into contact with actual magic that defies his attempts to stay rational in an irrational world.
Shadow’s rationality does not help him. Instead, it obscures the world around him and leaves him without anything satisfying or fulfilling in his life. His wife and his best friend betray him, then they die. Shadow’s refusal to engage does not even protect him from physical pain. Rather than a rational response, Shadow’s detachment is a defense mechanism. He wrongly assumes that by refusing to open up, he will not make himself vulnerable. After returning from the dead, Laura tells Shadow that part of the reason for her affair with Robbie was that Shadow barely seemed to be alive. His detachment drove away the woman he loved and destroyed the one positive thing that motivated him. The irony of a dead woman criticizing Shadow’s vitality illustrates the counter-intuitive nature of Shadow’s relentless rationality. From this point on, he begins to engage with and accept the world around him. He allows himself to believe in the supernatural, even those supernatural forces which he does not witness for himself. Shadow accepts that the world is an irrational place, and he strives to be more alive.
Shadow’s attempts to be more alive are only made successful by his death. He performs a vigil for Wednesday and dies during the nine days he hangs on the tree. His experience in the afterlife and his interactions with figures like Whiskey Jack teach him to engage with the world around him. He is resurrected by Easter, and when he returns, he stops a war by engaging with the gods. He speaks to them, telling them the truth about Wednesday’s plan. The irony of Shadow’s development is that he ends the war by encouraging the gods to disengage. They leave without the battle taking place, averting the sacrifices which were meant to empower Wednesday. Disengagement is the only way to stop Wednesday’s plan, but Shadow’s engagement with the old and new gods is only made possible by his learning how to abandon the detachment of his past. The rational Shadow is taught a lesson about how and when to engage with the world and, after his death, Laura accepts that he finally feels truly alive.
Mr. Wednesday/Odin
Mr. Wednesday is the mysterious stranger who seems to know every detail of Shadow’s life. In the novel, he functions as both a mentor figure and an antagonist, recruiting Shadow to instigate a war on false pretenses. Unbeknownst to Shadow when he is recruited, Wednesday is the American incarnation of the Norse god Odin. He names himself Wednesday due to a wry play on words: etymologically, the word Wednesday is derived from one of Odin’s other names, Wodan. Like his mythological forebear, Wednesday is a trickster and a leader. However, he cannot be the same Odin who was worshiped in Scandinavia. Wednesday comes into being in America when people bring him to the new land from their home countries. He emerges in America, and as such, his character is a mirror of American culture. Wednesday is Odin glimpsed through an American cultural lens, assembling his identity based on his interpretation of the land and the society he inhabits. In America, Odin is a con artist and a scammer. He is an unrepentant, licentious, debauched criminal. Because he believes America to be a land of scammers and liars, he becomes a scammer and a liar. Unlike the Odin whom Shadow meets in Iceland, Wednesday is bitter and resentful. He belongs to a land that is no place for gods, yet he is cursed to be a god in this godless land.
Wednesday directs the bulk of his resentment at humanity. He blames the people who brought him to America for bringing him into the world and then abandoning him. In America, he has no one to worship him. Gods are sustained by worship, and very few people in America are willing to dedicate battles to Odin or perform sacrifices in his name. Added to this, Wednesday speaks mournfully about his best friend and fellow scammer, Thor, who took his own life because he could not tolerate living in a society where no one believed in him. Wednesday blames humans for Thor’s death and his own diminished state. This bitterness and resentment have turned Wednesday into a ruthless figure. He is willing to do anything to bring back his power, such as killing all the other gods (and his own son) in a war fought on false pretenses. Odin was a warrior god, and Wednesday is a distant echo of this desire for battle. Removed from his original self, however, Wednesday will not fight in the battle. He wants other people to fight and die on his behalf. He needs their sacrifice.
Wednesday’s plan fails. He tries to run a rigged game, ignoring his own claim to Shadow that rigged games are the easiest to beat. The battle is averted, and all the gods go back to their homes. In a way, Wednesday’s elaborate con is almost too elaborate. Nearly a century in the making, his plan involves fathering a child that he can trick into doing his bidding decades later. This plan is eventually undone by Shadow because that same child has been raised to be different from Wednesday. Shadow does not share Wednesday’s beliefs or moral code. In a way, Wednesday created Shadow and then abandoned him. The irony of this dynamic is that Wednesday was created by the humans and then abandoned by them. This abandonment fueled his resentment, but he cannot recognize his hypocrisy. Wednesday’s absence means that Shadow grows into a unique person who does not share Wednesday’s moral perspective. If Wednesday had raised Shadow, his plan might have worked. However, Wednesday is unable to recognize the ways his actions perpetuate the same pain that he feels. His hypocritical abandonment of his son eventually brings about his downfall.
Laura Moon
Laura is Shadow’s wife. She dies at the beginning of American Gods, but she does not disappear from the narrative. By throwing a leprechaun’s gold coin into her grave, Shadow brings Laura back from the dead. She is not quite alive, but she is not wholly dead. Resembling a zombie with her body visibly rotting, she spends the novel trying to atone for the sins she committed in her life, the greatest of which is her betrayal of Shadow. Following Laura’s death, Shadow learns that she was having an affair with his best friend, Robbie. The revelation shakes Shadow to his core, and bereft of direction or motivation, prompts him to accept Wednesday’s job offer.
When she returns, Laura wants to help the husband she betrayed. Death provides her with a clarity she lacked while she was alive; she explains to Shadow that the emotions and confusion that led to the affair now seem irrelevant following her death and quasi-resurrection. She becomes separated from her vital urges and able to see her actions in a more objective context. Knowing that she wronged Shadow, she pledges that she will try to protect him to make up for the pain she caused him. Laura becomes Shadow’s zombie protector, saving him from several situations to atone for the sins committed during her lifetime.
During one of their conversations, Laura tells Shadow that she wants to be alive. She wants to return to life rather than the zombified approximation of life that she is currently experiencing. When Shadow claims that he does not know how to do this, she tells him that he can find a way. Laura wants something that she cannot have. Even if she were to return to life, parts of her body have rotted away during her travails. Her need to be alive is an emotional one. With her newfound perspective, Laura recognizes the failures of her past and wants to try again. Laura does not necessarily want to be alive; she wants a chance to fix her mistakes. At the end of the story, however, Laura accepts her fate. After saving Shadow and helping to scupper Wednesday’s plans, she tells Shadow to take back the leprechaun’s coin and allow her to die. Though she knows that she may not have redeemed herself in her husband’s eyes, she has at least contributed something positive to the world. She has helped to avert a needless war. This, for Laura, is enough to give her peace. She accepts her fate and she dies with the satisfaction of knowing that her life was not defined by her mistakes.
Czernobog
Czernobog is an old god who has found a niche in the modern world by working in an abattoir. He is a dark figure, so much so that he insists on playing as black in every game of checkers. His darkness is made apparent during one such game when he makes a bet with Shadow and wins the right to crush Shadow’s skull with his hammer. Czernobog’s work in the abattoir and his willingness to gamble Shadow’s life show that he is longing for a time past. He remembers the godlike power that came with swinging his hammer, and he is chasing that ghost.
Czernobog wants to replicate those feelings of power and importance that he experienced when he was worshipped. To do so, he constructs artificial situations that feed his desires and sustain him in the modern age and the unsuitable land. His actions foreshadow Wednesday’s own attempt to stage a war that will allow him to become the god he once was. Both old gods covet the time when they were important, and they seek out opportunities to feel this thrill once again, however diminished their status may be.
Czernobog also represents the concept of duality in the novel. If Czernobog embodies darkness, then his brother Bielebog embodies lightness. As Czernobog explains to Shadow, he and his brother are not necessarily two separate entities. Rather, they are both one another, and they are both distinct. Czernobog and Bielebog are the same and different, an expression of an idea that cannot be neatly expressed. Shadow struggles with this concept; his struggle is illustrative of the need to become attuned to unconventional, abstract ideas as he delves deeper into the world of the old gods. To Czernobog, the duality of his existence is simple: It just is. He and his brother are two sides of the same coin, representing different sides of the same idea or person. When the spring comes, Czernobog says, he will become his brother. However, this change does not frighten him. Czernobog knows that he is part of a larger cycle of death and renewal that will be repeated over time. He may depart, and he may become Bielebog, but Czernobog will always return. Czernobog’s attitude toward his brother and himself is an acceptance of the cycles of seasons, rebirths, and repeated actions that define existence for the old gods.
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By Neil Gaiman
