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.
Symbols & Motifs
Coins
Coins appear throughout American Gods, from the first chapter to the final epilogue. Often, they pass through Shadow’s fingers as he performs and perfects a series of sleight-of-hand illusions. Shadow can make the coins disappear and reappear by slipping them in and out of his fingers with a practiced delicacy. These tricks can often fool people into thinking he can perform real magic, even though he is a rational person who insists that he is not superstitious. Shadow’s coin tricks allow him to pass the time and distract from the world around him. Whether he is in prison or mourning the death of his wife, practicing the coin tricks becomes a ritual of self-distraction and allows him to direct his thoughts elsewhere. As Shadow becomes embroiled in Wednesday’s scheme, however, this comforting distraction becomes a symbol of his rapidly changing world. Shadow’s tricks are not real magic. When Shadow meets Mad Sweeney and Zorya Polunochnaya, however, he is shown coin tricks that he cannot rationally explain. These examples of actual magic involving coins symbolize the growing confusion in Shadow’s life. The coin tricks are less of a comfort and more of a demonstration that he is not quite as sure of the world around him as he was before. The actual magic coin tricks undermine Shadow’s surety about existence.
After Shadow accepts that magic and gods may be real, he begins to perceive a new symbolism in the coins. Zorya Polunochnaya explains to him that the coin she plucks from the night sky is able to offer protection to him. Similarly, Sweeney told him something similar about gold coins offering protection. While Shadow was dubious about Sweeney, he is willing to believe Zorya Polunochnaya as the world around him has changed. He gives away Sweeney’s coin, but he holds on to the silver dollar that Zorya Polunochnaya plucked from the sky. This change in action symbolizes Shadow’s growing acceptance that there is more to the world—particularly in a supernatural sense—than he previously believed. Shadow keeps the coin, demonstrating the value he attaches to it. This coin is not just a coin, but a protective item. In a rapidly-changing world where Shadow is suddenly worried he might need protection, the belief he invests in the coin symbolizes that he is beginning to believe.
Shadow throws Sweeney’s coin into Laura’s grave. At this stage of the novel, he does not believe in magic or the coin’s protective powers. The fate of the characters illustrates the power of the coin, however. After losing the coin, Sweeney’s life falls into ruin. The next time Shadow sees him, Sweeney is disheveled and on the verge of substance abuse. The time after that, he is dead. Without the protection of the gold coin, Sweeney succumbs quickly. Conversely, the coin brings Laura back to life. Her life becomes a symbolic inverse of Sweeney’s once she comes into possession of the gold coin. Laura’s resurrection symbolizes the innate power of the coin, showing how it can have the power of life over death. This extra lease on life does not make Laura happy, though. Eventually, she asks Shadow to take it away from her. Laura accepts her fate and asks Shadow to remove the coin’s protection. In doing so, he acknowledges the power of the coin and the power of her decision. Shadow taking the gold coin and returning his wife to the dead is a symbolic coin trick, making life appear and then disappear with his practiced fingers.
The Klunkers
Each year, the town of Lakeside holds a competition. An old car is pushed out onto the ice of the frozen lake, and the residents of the town gamble on the exact time that it will fall through the ice come spring. These cars—known as klunkers—hide a dark secret. The organizer of the competition is not a man but an ancient god who requires an annual sacrifice to sustain himself. Hinzelmann kills a child each year and places their body in the trunk of the car. The klunker and the body sink into the ice, covering up Hinzelmann’s crime in a yearly ritual that has become a part of the town’s folklore. The ritual nature of the annual competition adds to the religious overtones of the klunker sacrifice. Each car and each child is sacrificed at the altar of the organizer, Hinzelmann, who watches over the town and makes it prosperous in return. As such, the klunkers are a symbol of Hinzelmann’s dark pact with Lakeside. Like the body hidden in the trunk of the car, the seemingly innocuous town hides a terrible secret.
The klunkers are also symbolic on a broader level. The klunkers are chosen because they are old and unsuited for their original purpose. Once they have been stripped of anything useful, they perform one last function: to be entertainment for the townspeople and to sustain an old god. In a sense, the klunkers symbolize the old gods. The old gods are worn down and broken. They have been stripped of any use they once had in the world, and by the end of the novel, they are ready to be sacrificed by Wednesday in an attempt to sustain his life a little longer. Wednesday’s scheme mirrors Hinzelmann’s as he wants to perform an elaborate, public sacrifice, conducted in such a manner that not even those involved know the true meaning of the ritual. While Wednesday plans to sacrifice an army of old and new gods, Hinzelmann sacrifices hundreds of children over the course of several centuries. Their similar plans represent the desperate lengths to which the old gods will go to keep themselves alive.
The public nature of the klunker ceremony also has a symbolic meaning. As Shadow discovers, the gods do not make too much effort to hide. They often exist in plain view, walking among the humans without feeling a need to disguise themselves or their antics. The acts of the gods are like the klunkers in the middle of Lakeside; the darkness within is ignored by the broader public, which willingly ignores anything it does not want to see. This willful ignorance—of the existence of gods and the missing children hidden in the cars—represents humans’ desire to accept easy lies over difficult truths. They would rather believe that the klunkers are an innocuous local tradition rather than acknowledge the dark secrets of their town. Sophie, the young friend of Alison McGovern, complains that the adults refuse to acknowledge the frequency with which children from Lakeside go missing. The residents of Lakeside see only the klunker in the middle of the lake, and they do not want to think about what is inside; they are making a tacit sacrifice through their ignorance, just as the broader society is by refusing to acknowledge reality in favor of comfortable delusions.
The Storm
From the opening chapters, Shadow is warned about a gathering storm. Humans and gods alike warn him that a storm is coming and that he should prepare himself. After leaving prison, Shadow’s plane flies through a storm when he is talking to Wednesday, but he is too distracted to notice this as anything more than just a coincidental weather phenomenon. The storm is a foreboding image. As Shadow begins to learn about the apparently imminent war between old and new gods, the storm is a symbol of the tension that is gathering in the world like dark clouds on the horizon. Like an actual storm, this tension must eventually break, and Wednesday (seemingly) wants to be sure that the old gods are prepared for the moment when this happens. The gathering storm is a foreboding symbol of inevitable conflict and the change it will bring, a force that will be unleashed on the world.
The symbolism of the storm is tied up in religion and chaos. A storm is a natural event; humans cannot control it. Until the modern era, they struggled to explain the existence of storms and other natural phenomena through religion and myth. Gods such as Thor became an explanation for the thunder, while other gods were used to explain lightning, rain, and other events. These gods were worshipped by humans, and the worship gave them power. By the time American Gods begins, however, science has replaced these old gods as the way to explain natural events. The gods and their supernatural explanations are no longer required, and thus, they are no longer worshipped. Their power evaporates as this belief ebbs. The changing relationship between humans and events such as storms is a symbolic demonstration of the problems faced by the old gods. The old gods have been replaced, and the lingering storm on the horizon is a symbolic reminder of the power they once had but now no longer possess.
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By Neil Gaiman
