The Portrayal of Divinity in Neil Gaiman's ‘American Gods’

 by Hamish Critchley

In Neil Gaiman's ‘American Gods’, divinity is presented as inextricably linked to change: specifically the changing of human perspective, desire, and need. In the novel a Deity is presented as a being who is birthed and sustained by human belief and worship. In the story of Atsala, she is overcome by a rather blasphemous epiphany: ‘Gods are great, but the heart is greater’ - explicitly stating the man made nature of belief and religion. Furthermore, change is fundamental to the human experience - our history is a document of our change - therefore the very nature of belief and religion changes and shifts with us and what we deem essential or necessary at any given time. 

This forces gods to change with us. Grimnir, Glad-of-war, the All-Father or Odin exists to Shadow under the pseudonym ‘Wednesday’, even after his identity is revealed. At which point he tells Shadow that he ‘has as many names as there are winds, as many titles as there are ways to die’ which offers the ideology of renaming - Names being something uniquely human - gods in order to accommodate the ever changing landscape of human need. However, the spirit of the name, the belief behind the title, remains the same - which suggests that despite the fleeting existence of humans and what our labels, our belief and soul is passed down, generation after generation, as long as whatever necessity, brought about by lack, remains intact - the title changes to accommodate a minor change but the God continues to live now under many names. Furthermore the name seemingly comes after the belief - when the faith is longstanding enough it gains its label - as some new gods have summaries as there names i.e. Technical Boy because they are so modern they haven't had time to solidify worship. Therefore, the “new” gods' existence is presented as unstable and transient.

Their ephemeral existence is suggested to be so due to the lack of true worship and dedication. Mama-ji in debate with Wednesday about the threat of the new gods says ‘They worshipped the railroads here only a blink of an eye ago. And now the iron gods are as forgotten as the emerald hunters’ which reveals, simultaneously, the transient existence of modern deities and the near perpetuity of the old gods. The modern western world is characterised by fast paced development and change which means a modern dependency on one thing is soon replaced by another - like the railroad dependency for long distance travel then being replaced by the car - so a maintained worship, and by extension successful longstanding God, is never able to come to fruition. One such invention that created a deity is the TV and in conversation with Shadow they say ‘the TV’s the altar. I’m what people are sacrificing to’. Which suggests that the development themselves is not the god, but is instead only the altar upon which worship occurs, which then creates the divine. The god is the abstract belief whilst the TV the tangible place of worship. However this is not a rule strictly prohibited to modern deities: all gods are gods ‘of’ something. The preposition is what defines their worship: the god of war or the god of tv or the god of love. Gaiman suggests that the human interaction with said innovation is the worship that the god feasts on. 

A paradigm shift, a term popularised by Thomas Kuhn, occurrs between the old and new gods i.e. traditional religions and technoscience. Paradigm shift is about replacing the old with the new, competing in a survival of the fittest evolution competition of which god is deemed to fulfil a community's needs the best. In the story of Atsala, the mammoth god Nunyunnini was replaced with raven and fox gods because these new gods ‘grow more powerful in the land’ as they became a better choice of worship then the ‘bigger, slower and more foolish’ mammoth god. People are presented with a choice, and as the raven and fox gods seem stronger, Atsula’s people choose to worship them instead, making them the new paradigm. After the shift, the old beliefs lose relevance and begin to disappear as they are no longer useful and those who worship them become irrelevant as well. Atsula chooses to remain in the old land and worship her old god whilst her people literally and figuratively move on. Headed for the new land.

Whilst this “old versus new” paradigm shift slides on the icy surface of American belief the land remains steadfast and firm underneath it all. The United States of America is a country of immigrants and with this comes a country formed from many beliefs and folklores. ‘This country has been Grand Central Station for ten thousand years or more’ as Wednesday describes. All this faith and folklore muddy the surface of American land, Gaiman suggests: The belief in the land underpins and overpowers the faith in gods. The Native American deity Whiskey Jack says ‘we never built churches. We didn't need to. The land was the church.’ and throughout the novel America is described as a place unfit for foreign gods like Odin/Wednesday which Gaiman suggests to be because they have no true connection to the land: ‘they are like avocados trying to grow in wild rice country’. They need the land, first and foremost, to maintain power and yet the land stays beneath the surface, separating itself from these foreign powers, waiting in a cave. In the form of a buffalo headed man. The Land visits Shadow, in dreams, often throughout his odyssey to offer the protagonist guidance and in there last meeting, where Shadow finds resolution, Shadow asks the buffalo headed man if he is a god, to which the buffalo headed man reveals ‘I am the land’ completely disregarding the title of god, as it seems to small and transient of a label for what holds under the currents of faith. ‘Gods die when they are forgotten. People too. But the land’s still here and it isn't going anywhere’