The Library Annex

Religions are places to stand and look and act, vantage points from which to view the world. So none of this is happening. Such things could not occur. Never a word of it is literally true. Even so, the next thing that happened, happened like this:

For a time, norse mythology enveloped me. I read The Poetic Edda: Stories of the Norse Gods and Heroes, The Saga of the Volsungs with The Saga of Ragnar Lothbrok, Norse Mythology, amongst others. The idea of digesting mythology from a reference point of moral systems and western Judeo-Christian traditions enamored me. It felt nearly impossible to fully grasp the meaning of mythology from the modern lens. And while American Gods does not deal with Judeo-Christian figures and traditions, it does navigate a similar conundrum of finding meaning of the mythological pantheon within a culture which has strayed from them.

The book follows Shadow who encounters several mythological personas. I found it fun to translate the modern names and settings to their mythological character. Gaiman does not avoid the fantastical and blends reality and “magic” just to a point before demolishing the reader’s suspension of disbelief. His anecdotal historical episodes sprinkled throughout the narrative help resolve the idea of “old country” gods in the New World.

The novel also plays out as a mystery, of sorts. I constantly questioned Gaiman’s heavy-handed symbols and motifs. Yet, again, one who thinks about god(s) in a religious sense, archetypes of a moral system, may find themselves struggling to make connections between these motifs and the “meaning” of the story which then extends the mystery and bolsters the twist at the end.

While Gaiman proposes several ideas – namely how the idea of gods has transitioned into a modern era and in a country which prides itself on abandoning the past to focus on the future – he restrains himself from making any grandiose resolutions. He positions himself as an observer to a bizarre adventure. As the book ends, however, I do feel like he finds a sort of resolution. He exhibits an ongoing dichotomy between modern America and the gods of the old country. We question those differences, how humanity has changed, how our evolution has adjusted our sense of reality and meaning. However, the ending, in my mind, actually unifies some of these dualities. Nothing has actually changed. Despite our evolution, the gods remain true to their nature as we believe them to be – reflections of our fears and baser selves which have not dissipated over the eons. We may abhor that base nature yet we project it so we can reason with it, influence how it effects us. The gods may change in appearance but our need for gods doesn’t change as we still fear, love, hate, and grapple with the world around us.

This book is not what I expected, but I found it highly engaging both as a good read and as a stretch for my imagination and understanding of myself.