Teachers and parents! Our Yet Laura sees Shadow completely differently, calling him “puppy” – a name that’s at odds with Shadow’s huge physique, but fits with his loyal and kindly personality. LitCharts uses cookies to personalize our services. Mr. Nancy and Czernobog take Shadow and Wednesday’s body to an ash tree in Virginia, called the “world tree.” Three women (Shadow’s nine days are a wash of pain and hallucinations, including a vision of an elephant-headed god who tells Shadow, “it’s in the trunk.” Laura visits Shadow again and offers to cut Shadow down, but Shadow tells her to go get a drink of water from the fates to revive herself as her body continues to decay. They're like having in-class notes for every discussion!”

For now, Shadow doesn’t seem to care whether he lives or dies, seeming remarkably indifferent to the storm. His tree tie pin also foreshadows the “world tree” later in the book, referencing Yggdrasil from Norse mythology. The warden tells him his wife Laura died. There, Shadow finds out that his old cellmate Low Key is actually the Old God Loki, who has defected to the New Gods’ side.
Shadow tells her, after Sam assures him that she can believe impossible things, but their conversation is interrupted when Audrey Burton, ostensibly visiting her cousin Chad, shows up and demands that Shadow be arrested for skipping parole. This category contains all chapters within the 2001 Neil Gaiman novel American Gods. Gaiman begins by placing his novel within a very specific set of works about American folklore. Our He is not literally doing a survey of the gods in America—he is rather poking fun at the ways that American culture interprets itself and its gods.

Our From their first meeting, Laura was the one who took initiative in their relationship, deciding even details like what drink Shadow should order.

As the Norse God Odin, who is associated with granting wisdom, Mr. Wednesday sees knowledge as a form of power. By using our site, you acknowledge that you have read and understand our The Gods depend on the attention the humans give them and once this attention disappears, the Gods die and fade into nothingness. Shadow’s experience at the airport is full of misdirection, as he’s told to go here and there with seemingly no logic.

My students love how organized the handouts are and enjoy tracking the themes as a class.” Right away, Shadow is presented as a type of anti-hero. “Would not have made it through AP Literature without the printable PDFs. The tribe soon forgets about their mammoth god as they create new gods on American land. Though he is scheduled to serve six years, he is going to be released early. LitCharts uses cookies to personalize our services. Wednesday then tells Shadow to drive them to the House on the Rock, a strange tourist attraction that Wednesday calls one of the most important places in America. Shadow’s explanation for Johnnie’s troubles, phrased in semi-scientific language and showing deep insight into human behavior, again shows that Shadow is far more intelligent and thoughtful than most people would expect from a man of his size, strength, and history with crime. Shadow realizes that Wednesday’s plan all along has been to use a war between the gods to give himself power, as Loki is going to dedicate all the deaths to Odin before the fighting starts. Shadow himself is fairly adept at taking on a new identity for the sake of the grift. Back with Shadow, Wednesday tells Shadow to drive him to Chicago, where Shadow meets the Zorya sisters and Czernobog. Low Key’s reference to gallows humor later becomes a winking aside to Low Key’s (Loki’s) relationship to Odin, the god of the gallows in Norse mythology. At Rock City, Mr. World kills Technical Boy, one of the New Gods, and dedicates the death to Odin, starting Mr. Wednesday’s revival. The Buffalo man reiterates the idea that American life means change, and introduces the importance of belief in the novel—his command to “believe everything” indeed becomes a sort of thesis statement for the book. Mr. Wednesday is a man who does what he wants, regardless of the rules or desires of other people. By using our site, you acknowledge that you have read and understand our He chooses to walk the path of hard truths, finding out that his father was actually Mr. Wednesday. Yet it also foreshadows that Shadow may be found by people late at night who are searching for him when he least expects it. Laura looms large in Shadow’s mind, continuing to exert some control over his actions though she is dead. Like the traditional hero of a mystery novel, Shadow is jaded, terse, and on edge. American Gods is a fantasy narrative about a man named Shadow. Struggling with distance learning? (including LitCharts Teacher Editions. Chad reluctantly takes Shadow down to the police station, where he finds out that Shadow is in fact an ex-convict. “Would not have made it through AP Literature without the printable PDFs.
The land is the most important thing in America, he says, and anything the gods do is only to serve themselves. Laura’s death is the first sign that nothing is going to go as planned for Shadow. LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Plurality and the Power of the Individual in America There, Zorya Pulunochnaya takes back her Liberty coin and turns it into a moon to light Shadow’s way. Mr. Wednesday also nods at an identity for Shadow that will become clearer as the novel progresses, joking about a “king of America.” Instant downloads of all 1338 LitChart PDFs Mr. Wednesday is at the bar, and he offers Shadow the job again. Shadow, finally free, goes to Reykjavik, Iceland, where he meets an older incarnation of Odin, his father. With the Lakeside mystery solved, Shadow goes to Chicago to fulfill his promise and let Czernobog hit him with his hammer.


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