American Gods

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

American Gods (original title: American Gods ) is a novel by Neil Gaiman from 2001. It combines elements of fantasy , various aspects of classical and modern mythology and American folklore . The first translation comes from Karsten Singelmann and was published in 2003 by Heyne Verlag . In 2015, Eichborn Verlag published an unabridged version in the translation by Hannes Riffel with the addition of Director's Cut . The book was filmed in 2017 as a series of the same name .

subjects

The central thesis of the book is that gods and mythological creatures only exist because people believe in them. In the course of immigration, dwarfs, elves, ghosts and countless other gods from various cultures came to America. Over time and with the decreasing beliefs of people, the power of these beings dwindled and other, younger gods rose from people's consciousness: the media, new technologies, drugs and, last but not least, the capital market. This book tells of the bitter competition between new and old gods. The fate of numerous mythological figures is taken up by the author:

From the Nordic mythology Odin , Loki , the Norns , Alwis and Ostara , from the Slavic mythology Czernobog , from the African mythology Anansi , from the Indian mythology Kali , from the Egyptian mythology Thot , Anubis , Horus and Bastet , from the Celtic mythology Gwydion .

The American folk heroes are represented by Johnny Appleseed and a malicious goblin or a brownie . In addition, some characters from Gaiman's comic novel series Sandman have brief cameo appearances .

In a side narration, he also gives a detailed introduction to the history of slavery.

action

The story is told from the perspective of the mysterious and silent protagonist Shadow. For a failed robbery, Shadow is serving a prison sentence. He is released after three years and looks forward to being home. On leaving prison, he learns that his wife and best friend have been killed in a car accident.

On the way to the funeral in Eagle Point , he takes a job as a bodyguard for a Mr. Wednesday who knows a lot more about Shadow's life than he should know. Even though Wednesday soon comes out as a con artist, his pay is good and extremely real. During his recruitment, Shadow meets a leprechaun named Mad Sweeney, who teaches him a coin trick and gives him a magical gold coin as a goodbye. Shadow throws her into the grave of his wife Laura, which means that she returns to life as a kind of zombie or revenant and now accompanies Shadow's further adventures from afar and sometimes also protects him firmly. In contrast to "typical" undead, Laura has consciousness and her memories and is fully aware of the fact that she is dead.

Shadow and his new employer travel across the country visiting unusual friends and colleagues on Wednesdays. It takes a while until Shadow realizes that Wednesday is actually the incarnation of Odin (also Wotan or Wodan), the all-father from the Nordic legends. Its name Wednesday ( German  Wednesday ) is derived from the Old Norse Wodanstag .

The sole purpose of the visits is to recruit other old gods, whose strength is dwindling, for one last great battle against the new American gods. The incarnations of modern life such as the media, the Internet or stock market capital threaten, in Wednesday's opinion, the existence of the old gods.

At the House on the Rock (and its world's largest carousel), Shadow gets to know some of the old gods at the first major meeting, including Mr. Nancy (the manifestation of the African spider god Anansi ), Czernobog in the form of an elderly Eastern European immigrant and Alwis .

The meeting is a bust. Most of the old gods are too indolent and too safe for Wednesday to rouse them for his war. Following the meeting, a squad of shadowy men in black, led by the mysterious Mr. World, kidnaps Shadow. The men tortured him on a secret prison train. Laura frees him, killing several of the kidnappers, which is why the entire police apparatus is on Shadow's heels.

Wednesday first hides him in Cairo in the funeral home of Mr. Ibis and Mr. Jacquel, the incarnations of the Egyptian deities Thoth, Anubis and Bastet, who appears here as an ordinary brown house cat. Eventually he comes to Lakeside, a sleepy community on the Great Lakes . He meets several local originals, including Hinzelmann, an old man who enjoys telling very convincing lies, and Chad Mulligan, the local police chief.

Lakeside's quiet idyll appears suspicious to Shadow. While the small towns all around become ghost towns, Lakeside is thriving. However, children seem to be disappearing there at regular intervals. Because Shadow often has to travel across the country with Wednesday, he can no longer investigate this suspicion.

Wednesday and Shadow meet with Johnny Appleseed and the goddess Easter ( German  “Easter” or German  “Dawn” ) to convince them of the necessity of war, but unsuccessfully. In contrast, the New Gods agree to negotiate. Despite the assurance of safe conduct , Wednesday was shot dead at the meeting and the murder was televised live. This brutal act of betrayal shakes the Old Gods, and they unite under the banner of vengeance to face the enemy in the final battle.

Shadow feels obliged by the contract with Wednesday to hold the wake for him , a superhuman challenge, because that means re-enacting Odin's sacrifice for the people. For nine days and nights he hung, wounded by his own spear, in the world tree Yggdrasil . Shadow does the same and eventually dies. In the beyond, Thoth leads him to the place of execution, where Anubis weighs his soul.

Now Shadow learns that he is Wednesday's son and that he is part of the plan that he has hatched together with Mr. World to deceive all the gods - a two-man hoax. Mr. World is actually Loki the Liar, his former jail buddy whom he met as "Low Key Lyesmith". He had arranged Wednesday's murder to start the war. The multiple deaths of the gods and the resulting chaos would have brought Odin back stronger and supplied Loki with chaos energy for thousands of years.

With rituals she doesn't quite understand herself, Easter brings Shadow back to life. On a Thunderbird ( English Thunderbird ) he flies to Rock City, the place of war. He finds Loki fatally wounded by Laura. She pierced him with a branch of the world tree. Shadow then ends the war by exposing Odin and Loki's hoax. “This is not a suitable land for gods”, he explains to the assembled group of gods and asks them to go home and make the best of it. The gods disappear, Odin's spirit fades and Laura also finds her peace at her own request, as Shadow makes the magical gold piece disappear with a trick.

In the epilogue, Shadow returns to Lakeside and exposes Hinzelmann as an ancient Germanic goblin who took the missing children as compensation for his services. In an addendum, Shadow finally travels to Iceland , where he meets another incarnation of Odin. He tells him what his alter ego did in the United States, which prompted the old man to comment: “He was me, yes, but I'm not him.” Shadow delights him with the artificial eye of the dead American Odin and amazes him him with a final coin trick.

The book thrives on a multitude of side stories and intercuts that enlighten the reader about the origins and adventures of the most diverse mythical beings. The Queen of Sheba works as a prostitute and keeps herself young and beautiful by regularly sucking in suitors like a succubus . An Ifrit driving a taxi trades jobs for a traveling salesman . A badly mistreated pair of twins sold into slavery brings the gods of voodoo from Africa to “God's Own Country”. The oldest of these settlement histories goes back to the year 14,000 BC.

characters

  • Shadow - An ex-convict, bodyguard for Mr. Wednesday.
  • Laura - Shadow's wife, who dies in a traffic accident at the beginning of the novel, responsible for Shadow's early release from prison.

Old gods:

  • Mr. Wednesday - Odin , in Norse mythology the god of knowledge and wisdom. In the novel, he makes a living as a con artist. He tries to persuade the other ancient gods to go to war against the modern gods.
  • Czernobog - The Slavic god of darkness and twin brother of Bielebog , the god of light.
  • The Zorya sisters - relatives of Czernobog who represent different stars: the morning star (Zorya Utrennyaya), the evening star (Zorya Vechernyaya), and the midnight star (Zorya Polunochnaya). In Slavic legends, they are servants of Dažbog , the guardian of the doomsday dog, Simargl , who is chained to the star Polaris in the constellation Ursa Minor (the "Little Bear"). If the chains ever break, the dog will destroy the world.
  • Mr. Nancy - Anansi , a tricky spider god from African folklore. He often makes fun of people's stupidity.
  • Mr. Ibis - Thoth , the Egyptian god of wisdom and writing. He runs a funeral home in Cairo, Illinois.
  • Mr. Jacquel - Anubis , the Egyptian god of death and mummification. Works as an expert at Mr. Ibis.
  • Easter - Ostara , the Germanic goddess of the dawn.
  • Mad Sweeney - regards himself as a “ leprechaun ”, probably represents the image America has of the Irish; loud mouthed, regular drinkers with a penchant for physical violence.
  • Whiskey Jack - Wisakedjak , a trickster from Indian mythology.
  • John Chapman - Johnny Appleseed , an American pioneer legend.
  • Low Key Lyesmith - Loki , the god of lies and deceit, from the Nordic world of legends.

New gods:

  • The tech boy - the new god of computers and the internet. Its appearance corresponds to all the clichés of a nerd. Even if he is now the most powerful new god, others like to call him “The Fat Child”.
  • Media - New goddess of television.
  • The Men in Black - Mister Town, Mister Stone, Mister Wood and Mister Road arise from the American obsession with black. They are henchmen and spies for Mr. World.
  • The Invisible - The new gods of the stock market. You personalize the famous invisible hand that supposedly rules the market. You despise direct interference and would like to leave the solution of all problems to the market.

backgrounds

Even before it was published, a weblog was set up for advertising purposes , allowing its readers to follow the process of writing and, later, of editing , the publication of the novel and the actions of the advertising campaign. Subsequently, this website developed more and more into an official Neil Gaiman website, which is still regularly updated with relevant information.

Some thoughts of the novel were addressed by Neil Gaiman in his comic novel series Sandman (1988-1996, DC Comics / Vertigo ).

Sequels

In the story related to the novel The Monarch of the Glen , published in the anthologies Legends II and Fragile Things , Gaiman presents Shadow as an incarnation of the god Balder from Germanic mythology . In The Monarch of the Glen Shadow also takes on the role of Beowulf : He is hired by the enigmatic Mr. Alice to fight a monster from the sea as entertainment at a luxury party.

In Gaiman's novel Anansi Boys , published in 2006 , one of the main characters reappears in Mr. Nancy, an incarnation of the West African trickster Anansi .

Awards

In 2002 the novel won the Hugo Award , the Nebula Award and the Bram Stoker Award , each in the “best novel” category, and it was also nominated for the BSFA Award and the World Fantasy Award .

expenditure

  • Neil Gaiman: American Gods. Roman (original title: American Gods ). German by Karsten Singelmann. Heyne, Munich 2005, 623 pages, ISBN 3-453-40037-2
  • Neil Gaiman: American Gods - Director's Cut (Original title: American Gods ). Unabridged version. German by Hannes Riffel. Eichborn, Cologne 2015, 672 pages, ISBN 978-3-8479-0587-5

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Phantastik-Couch.de: American Gods - Director's Cut