Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Wednesday
Sorry I dropped off here for a few days. How did you process Wednesday as a character? I found him loathesome, then excused him for being a god with petty origins, then processed how he treated people based on what he knew about them (the girl who had killed a pet). Oh, and he's Shadow's father and started the whole battle. A deep character.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
I never really connected with Wednesday. Like you, C, I sometimes found him loathsome, sometimes endearing, but I never felt a great personal interest in him the way I did with Shadow. (Maybe this mimics how people seem more interested in Jesus than in God himself ... easier to relate to somehow, less inscrutable ... maybe that's why the Bible writers introduced Jesus as a character, as someone who can break everything down for us. I personally think he's a great addition.)
What do you guys think of this? I find it a bit perplexing. Wednesday is supposed to be Odin, and he is a wanderer, but I don't see the rest.
In a letter of 1946 Tolkien stated that he thought of Gandalf as an "Odinic wanderer." Other commentators have also compared Gandalf to the Norse god Odin in his "Wanderer" guise—an old man with one eye, a long white beard, a wide brimmed hat, and a staff.
Maybe what I'm trying to say is that I prefer an Odin who's more like Gandalf — good, wise, grandfatherly, powerful, always entertaining concerns larger than his own welfare — than like Wednesday, although I can see how Wednesday's character is more in keeping with the grittiness of Gaiman's tale.
And probably not very many writers, J.K. Rowling aside, want to put forth an obviously Gandalflike character.
That's an excellent point. A Gandalf doesn't work in this battle of the egos, but the accuracy matters as far as giving a consistent backdrop, right?
Wednesday seems more like a Zeus, doesn't he? Petty but powerful with a weird sense of justice. And most of all, the big appetites! Wednesday had such big appetites for women, food, drink and, in the end, conquering it all.
I don't think it would have been implausible to bring in the Greek pantheon over the Nordic. Do you? There isn't the same direct settlement, but I think if the Greek deities enchanted the Europeans, that would have the same crossover appeal — although maybe more in the aesthetic sense than actual worship (Benjamin Franklin and Les Neuf Soeur).
Some Freemasons would have been spicy, too.
I think the Greeks would have worked well and would have been fun. Yeah, the Old Norse types actually came to America, but our spiritual heritage feels distinctly more Greek. Birthplace of democracy and drama (Athens, meet Hollywood) and all that, not to mention that our most important civic buildings are specifically Greco-Roman -- not Norse -- in style. And the holy book most of us "revere" is the New Testament, a Greek text. And every city of decent size in America has a Greek restaurant. Who has a Nordic restaurant? Who's serving fermented shark meat and lutefisk? We want what Aristotle ate — literally and figuratively — not Erik the Red.
And Wednesday seems more Zeuslike than Odinlike, as you note. And Shadow has traces of the tragic Greek hero about him.
Even so, I like your land is the deity route best of all. Native America.
I agree we as Americans tend not to favor the Norse heritage ("Thor" not withstanding), probably partly because our school history books shortchanged the Vikings so much in terms of culture and exploration. I kind of enjoyed that aspect of the book, though, because I found it interesting to think about gods I wasn't as familiar with.
I know Tolkien drew heavily from Old Norse mythology, but I agree, Gandalf might look like the wanderer Odin, but that's about it. Gaiman definitely emphasized certain characteristics (deception, cunning, seduction) -- over others (wisdom, nobility, poetry). I suppose, as you say, it serves the story.
Post a Comment