Nuevos espacios, nuevos tiempos, nuevos mitos"American Gods" de Neil Gaiman

Zusammenfassung

This article analyzes the pertinence of religion in the United States in Neil Gaiman’s 2001 novel "American Gods". The travel narrative of the protagonists, Shadow and Mr. Wednesday, across the wide highways in the American landscape symbolizes the search for a stable center, both for meaning for the metaphysical drives of American society, and for the identity of the United States themselves. I analize the fight between the so-called “Old gods”, brought into America from other countries by the faithful throughout the complicated immigration history of the United States, and the “New gods", associated with technology, mass media, and the consumerism society of late capitalism. The article suggests that the last pages of the novel reflect the futility of identifying a unique vision of the identity of the United States as a nation, just as there is not a single deity that can satisfy the need for transcendence of the complex multiethnic and hypertechnological society of the nation.