‘American Gods’ by Neil Gaiman imagines what it might be to have gods incarnate, living among and interacting with us. It tells about a war fought across America between gods of old and new-age gods in a contest for power and influence.
Neil Gaiman’s ‘American Gods’ is divided into four parts: Shadow, Mike Ainsel, The Moment Before the Storm, and Epilogue and Postscript.
Part 1: Shadow
The story’s introduction features Shadow at the end of a three-year prison term, receiving news that his wife Laura has died in a car crash.
He meets an old man who seems to know a lot about him and who offers him a job as a bodyguard. Shadow also realizes that his former boss, who he hoped to give him his old job back, died in the same accident that took his wife. He reluctantly accepts the job offer.
The old man is Mr. Wednesday. They meet with Mr. Wednesday’s colleague Mad Sweeney, a drunk and rowdy Irish, at a pub where they drink to seal the deal. Mad Sweeney does a magic trick that materializes a gold coin from the thin air. Shadow, himself an amateur magician, wants to know the trick. Mad Sweeney intends to fight him, and when he loses, he gives Shadow the gold coin.
We see here Gaiman’s talent for creating colorful characters. Once Mad Sweeny is introduced, his crazy, larger-than-life personality eclipses everyone nearby. His presence becomes an event in itself, and the mere introduction of a side character enlivens the action.
At Laura’s wake, his former boss’s wife, Audrey, reveals to him that Laura was having an affair with his former boss. Shadow drops the gold coin he received from Mad Sweeney at the funeral into Laura’s grave. Laura appears to him in his motel room at night, and they talk. She thanks him for the gift of the coin. Shadow is unsure if this is a dream or a real thing.
Shadow is only vaguely aware of Wednesday’s planned venture, and he follows him, in what forms the novel’s rising action, as he meets with several characters like Mr. Nancy, Czernobog, and the Zorya sisters to persuade them to join him on the mysterious venture. Czernobog proposes a wager: he will join Mr. Wednesday if he loses a checkers game against Shadow. He will strike Shadow on the forehead with a sledgehammer if he wins. Shadow loses one game and wins a rematch.
In the night, one of the Zorya sisters, Polunochnaya, plucks a silver dollar from the moon and gives it to Shadow, saying it is for protection.
While Mad Sweeny’s production of a gold coin was obvious and looked like a convincing coin trick to Shadow, Zorya Polunochnaya’s silver dollar from the moon had the feel of true enchantment for him. I notice a contrast in Shadow’s treatment of the fantastic events that happen in the day and those that happen at night. Shadow took the events at night at face value because they could be interpreted as dream events. However, he often doubted the day’s magic and tried to explain them away as tricks or normal events.
Wednesday recruits Shadow for a bank heist, where he takes advantage of a snowstorm and an out-of-service ATM to steal cash deposits. The proceeds are to help fund a feast Wednesday has planned. The heist is a success. Wednesday, Mr Nancy and Shadow visit House on the Rock and ride on a carousel that miraculously transports them into another world. The carousel animals are transformed into fantasy animals. Mr. Nancy, Wednesday, and the other characters who attend this meeting called by Wednesday are revealed to be quite different from their normal appearance. Shadow finds out in due time that they are the incarnate of old gods in America.
Wednesday reveals his mission, the story’s central conflict: He wants to recruit the old gods to fight a war with the new gods, who he claims threaten their existence. Very few of the old gods who attend are convinced.
A contingent of the new gods abducts Shadow. They had taken him earlier and tried to intimidate him to stop working for Wednesday. This time, they kidnap him and torture him to reveal information about Wednesday. On the night of his capture, a resurrected Laura comes to his rescue. She kills the guards who keep Shadow captive, freeing him. As he escapes, a raven, which Shadow figures out is a messenger from Wednesday, tells him to go to Cairo.
Shadow’s escape marks a key point in the story, as he is now on the run from the new gods. Shadow buys a used car and makes his way to Cairo, Illinois, to meet Wednesday’s friends, with whom he will stay for a while. Along the way, he picks up Samantha, a hitchhiker, and drops her off.
Gaiman uses a narrative device in which he intersperses the action with anthropological or pseudo-historical accounts of gods in America, giving the story much-needed context. With this technique, he avoids info-dumping in the middle of the action. This gives the reader a sense of the precarious position where the old gods in America find themselves, making the plot weighty and credible.
Wednesday’s friends are undertakers Mr. Jaquel, Mr. Ibis, and their cat (Bast). Mad Sweeney finds him there and asks Shadow to return the gold coin, which he reveals as a kind of good luck charm. Finding that Shadow has lost the coin, Mad Sweeney drinks himself to death, and his corpse is cared for by the undertakers. In a dream, Wednesday is visited by the undertaker’s cat, which shapeshifts into a woman, and she heals the injuries he sustained in the torture he received in captivity.
Part 2: Mike Ainsel
Shadow is installed with a new identity in Lakeside, Wisconsin. He becomes Mike Ainsel, Mr. Wednesday’s nephew, who follows his uncle on business trips. Here, he meets an old local, Mr. Hinzelmann, the local cop, Chad Mulligan, and his new neighbor, Marguerite Olsen. They also introduce him to a local tradition where a clunker (the hull of an old car) is driven out into the middle of the lake frozen in winter. Citizens of the town buy lottery tickets to predict the time and date at which the hull will break through the ice.
Shadow dreams about a figure, Buffalo Man, who informs Shadow that he must sacrifice himself to bring his wife Laura back to life. Shadow also dreams about thunderbirds but has no idea what that signifies. Wednesday calls him, angry at him: his dreams were alerting notice, which Wednesday sent him to Lakeside to avoid.
Wednesday arrives in Lakeside and takes Shadow across America to recruit more gods for the upcoming war. The new gods ambush them, and they narrowly escape by taking a detour through another realm, which Wednesday called ‘the backstage.’ There, they meet Whiskey Jack and John Chapman, old legendary figures too, and they refuse Wednesday’s invite but are attracted to Shadow, advising him to abandon Wednesday.
The cast of characters in this novel (the old gods, in particular) is plentiful and comes from diverse sources. However, past a point, the plentitude of characters becomes a detriment. Very few of these characters add anything significant to the story and are soon forgotten after they show up.
When Shadow returns, several things happen in Lakeside. A child is missing, one Shadow remembers seeing when he first came into town. An undead Laura also visits him and claims he was calling her. Marguerite invites him to dinner, and he meets Samantha, who happens to be Marguerite’s sister. She is suspicious of him but believes he is not a bad person and allows him to keep his secret. He encounters Audrey, who is visiting Chad by some coincidence, and she reveals to Chad that Shadow is a criminal.
Chad detains Shadow at the police station, and Shadow calls the undertakers in Cairo. While waiting, the station’s television, under the control of the new gods, broadcasts Wednesday’s assassination, the story’s turning point. Mr. Nancy and Czernobog, disguised as police officers, come to rescue Shadow. They confirm to Shadow that Wednesday has been killed.
Part 3: The Moment of the Storm.
Shadow, Mr. Nancy, and Czernobog meet with Mr. Town, Technical Boy, and Media from the camp of the new gods to retrieve Wednesday. Shadow recognizes the driver of the new gods as Low Key Lyesmith, a former inmate with whom he was close. He also recognizes Low Key as Loki and guesses that Loki is a double agent.
While the plot twist of Low Key being Loki is ingenious, I find it a bit unimaginative. Granted, Loki is a trickster who is known for lying and bending the truth, but I expect that a master of cunning should come up with a better disguise.
Shadow insists on keeping a vigil for Wednesday as he had promised Wednesday, a decision opposed by Mr. Nancy and Czernobog, who think the vigil is dangerous and would kill him. They come to a field with a bare silver tree, and three old women strip Shadow and strap him on the tree. Mr. Nancy and Czernobog leave Wednesday’s corpse at the foot of the tree to which Shadow is tied.
Shadow is expected to last nine days but passes out from the strain by the third day. Before passing out, he is visited by a squirrel, Laura, and Horus. He advises Laura to ask the old woman for a drink from Urd’s well to return to life. Horus visits him as a naked madman and introduces himself as Ibis and Jacquel’s former companion who had wandered off.
When Shadow passes out, he sees some revelations in a trance-like state. He discovers he is Mr. Wednesday’s son. He realizes Mr. Wednesday and Loki are playing a trick on all the gods. He undergoes some life-or-death trials in the underworld, which he passes but chooses not to return to life.
While Shadow is hanging, the story’s climax, the war between the old and new gods, starts. Mr. Town breaks off a branch of the silver tree on which Shadow is hanging, but he does not touch Shadow. Mr. World had warned him not to harm Shadow. As he returns the stick, he meets Laura. Laura is recovering a bit after drinking from Urd’s well. She hitch-hikes with Mr. Town but kills him and takes the stick to Mr. World herself.
At the novel’s end, several events occur that are hard to track, and each detracts from the story’s climactic finish. There are so many things happening that none delivers a satisfying punch.
For his part, Horus rushes off to the battleground to bring Easter, the one who could restore Shadow to life. She rides on a thunderbird to Shadow, and when he is resurrected, Shadow is not excited to be back.
Laura brings the stick to Mr. World, who is Loki, but instead of giving it to him, she kills him by impaling herself and Loki with the stick. Loki mocks her effort, saying that as long as the battle happens, his and Wednesday’s plan will succeed.
However, in the story’s climax, Shadow rides into the battle and reveals to the fighting gods that Loki (Mr. World), the god of chaos, and Odin (Wednesday), the god of warfare, want both parties to kill themselves to refill their god powers by this sacrifice. The fighting gods desist from the battle; thus, Wednesday’s plan is foiled.
Part 4: Epilogue and Postscript
In the novel’s falling action, Mr. Nancy and Shadow return to Mr. Nancy’s home in Florida, and Shadow remembers something revealed to him in his trance during his vigil. He returns to Lakeside.
This development, which comes almost as an afterthought, makes a case against Gaiman’s drawing out many side plots for “American Gods.” Long after the main story is done, he is forced to return to the story of a murder mystery that might have been important at the time it was revealed but which didn’t seem to matter anymore after the main plot has been resolved. The story would have been stronger if it were more straightforward.
He goes to the clunker sitting on the frozen lake and finds the missing girl in the trunk. At that moment, the ice breaks, and Shadow falls into the water.
Mr. Hinzelmann saves Shadow. At that moment, Shadow also realizes that Hinzelmann is the culprit, but because he owes his survival to Hinzelmann, Shadow would not attack him. Hinzelmann is a kobold who sacrificed children to give Lakeside its prosperity over the years. As they discuss this revelation, Chad comes in and shoots and kills Hinzelmann. He is so guilt-stricken at the cold-blooded murder that he contemplates suicide. Shadow extracts the memory of the murder from Chad’s mind to protect his life.
The novel’s resolution reveals Shadow visiting Iceland. He meets Odin there and hands him Wednesday’s glass eye. The Odin in Iceland admits that Wednesday is his alter ego but is not connected to him.
