I love how Neil Gaimen turns all our expectations on our heads by using unknown gods, and not making the race of the main characters clear. He explores what is important and what is not, pushing the book to its boundaries, causing us to question the conventions and ideas of normality we place on ourselves. He also accomplishes this by wrapping it in stories within stories within stories. Causing the novel to develop, and the protagonist who was at first the teller of a story, and became the singer and liver of his own story through hardships and trials where he is faced by an enemy or obstacle.
“Fat Charlie” is a middle aged man about to marry, not the typical fantasy novel protagonist. But he has child dispositions where he acts immature enough and innocent enough to invoke the cycle of development and finding oneself. His problem is, is that he resides in his father's shadow, automatically ashamed of him, and habitually apologizes for his embarrassment to the people his father interacts with. He goes through ordeals that eventual lead him to find himself as his own person, despite everything that has happened to him.
The book and every story either directly or indirectly revolves around Mr. Nancy, from the very beginning. It starts out from Fat Charlie's perspective describing his father, and his death. Fat Charlie's life is heavily influenced at first by his dad, which is where the story begins. We are told about Anansi's past, and even a few stories. These stories, explained in the book, have Anansi in two different forms a human and a spider, it all depends on how the story is told. At one point it explains how Anansi stole stories from Tiger. And now Anansi is in another form, dead, gone, not present but heavily influential in the story nevertheless. Making the entire story his own, which transfers to his son who finds himself in the story.
No comments:
Post a Comment