This weekend I watched the finale of the second season of American Gods , as well as one of the most epic climactic moments in Game of Thrones : the great battle between the alliance of the living (under the leadership of the Dragon Queen) and the zombie hosts of the Night King. I’ve mentioned Neil Gaiman’s American Gods before in a blog about my visit to the Chicago Art Institute. Then, I praised the author saying:

Throughout his work, we see time and again a depiction of the existential state of contemporary, urban American society juxtaposed with ancient mythical characters, which produces an interesting interaction. It has always seemed to me that Gaiman is seeking to use old myths to re-enchant the modern post-Christian world, which has lost so much of its meaning and myth.

Here, I use the word myth not in the sense of a lie, but in the sense of a narrative that informs the identity of a group, a tribe, or a nation. For instance, the myths of “progress” and “manifest destiny” have at different times informed America’s identity narratives, and in the ancient world cities had their patrons with mythical beginnings: Rome was founded by Remus and Romulus, Athens was won over by Athena after a contest with Poseidon over who would be the patron deity of the city, etc. Sometimes these foundation myths represented deep psychological drama that is inherited (e.g. the constant fights and resentments between half-brothers and sister-wives in the Old Testament, which come with both the “chosenness” idea and with polygamy) and historical migrations (the “exchange of hostages” myth among the Vanir and Aesir, which is believed to document the migration of Indo-European tribes into Teutonic territory in pre-history).

In the ancient world, people were very likely to speak of “the gods of my nation”, and those gods were much more clearly defined. Each city had its gods, each ethnic and tribal group had theirs. If we were to transfer this to modernity, who would be the American Gods? This is Gaiman’s experiment. He brilliantly weaves the scars of the nation into the mythos–the racial scars, details from the II World War, and others.

Odin (Mr. Wednesday), of course, represents America’s Northern European roots, but he’s a bit more sinister and complex. Odin is Mercury’s counterpart, the god of the market and of money–our currency, after all, says “In God We Trust”. But this God of money has nothing to do with the God of the Bible (sorry, Christians). In the Gospels, Jesus plainly stated that one can not worship God and Mammon (money) at the same time. The Mammon of the north would have been Odin, the Norse Mercury. He was also a warrior god, which reminds us that we have spent more years of our history at war than at peace and that we have the largest military infrastructure on Earth. America is an incredibly belligerent country, and clearly exhibits Odin’s DNA.

Without giving too much away, I will say that in my view the main character in American Gods–Shadow Moon–represents the American psyche. Shadow came from elsewhere. He wasn’t born in America, and isn’t fully informed about his roots. Similarly, most Americans come from immigrants, but most have only a superficial understanding of their roots. Shadow is part black, part white–racially ambiguous, a melting pot. Like the Statue of Liberty, he was given to us by France–our precursor who informed the Republican and Enlightenment ideas at the core of our political myths and values.

In the novel (and series) the true battle is between the Old Gods and the New Gods. It was interesting that Old Media (one of the new gods) was a white woman from the fifties–when television started replacing the quality time people would spend with family and started becoming a household deity … but New Media is Asian, and embodies the complexities of the internet era.

When cultures become diverse and complex, we often see the pantheons of gods and spirits exhibit similar complexity. The ancient Europeans had Aesir and Vanir races of gods. In many Latin American traditions (like Candomble and Espiritismo) there are “courts” of different kinds of spirits: the Vikings, the Gypsies, the Congos, the Indians, and in Voodoo it’s different African nations. In the American Gods series, pop culture solves the problem of how to construct a myth from such vast diversity using storytelling. We find Hindus (and their deities) working at gas stations, and we even find the Voodoo Gods in New Orleans–not just the ones that came from Africa, but also Maman Brigitte who originated as a Celtic Goddess. American Gods–like much of our superhero mythology–re-enchants the modern world by building a tapestry through storytelling that connects the nodes we see in the banality and ordinary reality around us with historical, transcendental, and archetypal imagery that effectively gave meaning to our predecessors. In doing so, it imbues our world with new colors and depth.

We find another modern myth in the Anglo-centric world of Game of Thrones, where Westeros is England enlarged. The series taps into the cosmological theme of the primal battle between two forces, which here (as in ancient Norse myth) is represented as Fire and Ice. While the “Seven Gods” are merely presented as a human invention that serves cultural needs, the only time we ever see magic at play in this world is when the Night King wields his icy power, or when the fiery God of Light intervenes in history. One commands an army of corpses, another one has resurrected his chosen more than once for a particular historical purpose. One gives death and one gives life.

Joseph Campbell said “humans are storytelling animals”. The extraordinary writing abilities of these two authors have beautifully conjured up worlds in our imaginations and must be credited for the huge success of these series, but I think their power to appeal to deep drives within the human psyche is also part of the reason for their success. Something in people hungers for these stories, for myths, for an escape into fantasy and play, and also for a sense of meaning which works of fiction may not provide, but I think they do satiate it to some extent. I can’t praise these two authors enough. If you wish to read good fiction, they are the ones I recommend!

Further Reading:

American Gods

A Game of Thrones

Watch

American Gods Revealed: The Mythology Behind American Gods Part 1

and 2