American Gods: Chapter 6 Summary & Analysis

The chapter opens with an excerpt from Thomas Bailey Aldrich’s poem “Unguarded Gates”: a long list of exotic gods brought to America by immigrants. Shadow can’t process what he is seeing as he rides the carousel, looking at Mr. Nancy but also seeing a bejeweled spider and an extraordinarily tall man with a feather headdress and a young black boy and a small garden spider overlaid on Mr. Nancy’s body. He turns his head to Czernobog and sees there a small dark thing with coals for eyes and a dark-haired prince wearing a bearskin and riding a creature with blue swirls all over its body. Wednesday rides his wolf, now detached from the carousel, over to Shadow, and tells Shadow all his many names and titles – including Odin, the all-father. Two huge ravens come and perch on Wednesday’s shoulders. Shadow doesn’t know what to think, but remembers the Buffalo Man telling him to “Believe everything.”

Shadow suddenly finds himself in a large hall with a thatched roof and a fire burning in the center of the room. Mr. Nancy mumbles about how cold it is in Wednesday’s hall, which is called Valaskjalf. About ten people sit on benches against the walls, and Wednesday angrily whispers that there should be many more here. Nancy brushes past him to start off the meeting with a story. He opens by acknowledging that their gathering is few, and may seem powerless, but then tells a story about the time that he, a spider, stole Tiger’s balls and blamed the monkeys for the theft. The moral of the story is: just because you’re small, doesn’t mean you have no power.

Wednesday stands up and walks into the firelight. He gives a speech about the coming storm, and the loss of power that all the gods have faced in America. Now that they, the Old Gods, have little influence, New Gods are arising to take their place. Wednesday thinks that the Old Gods should band together and fight against the New Gods. A woman in a red sari, Mama-ji, stands and protests that Wednesday is just looking for his own glory, and that the New Gods will not stand the test of time. She thinks that they should wait for the New Gods to become obsolete again, like what happened with the gods of railroad and iron. Other gods agree with Mama-ji.

The fire in the hall goes out, and Mr. Nancy tells Shadow to be careful not to use the word “god” once they get back to the House on the Rock. The group then magically returns to the room with the carousel, and Shadow asks if everything in the hall really happened. Mr. Nancy tells Shadow to hush. Wednesday directs Shadow to take his car and shuttle the other gods, now in mundane human forms, to a restaurant near the House on the Rock. On his second trip, Shadow drives Mama-ji and a young man with a chest shaped oddly like a barrel, who hums the entire way to the restaurant (Alviss).

Shadow gets to the restaurant and waits outside while his passengers go in. Then he overhears a half-familiar voice telling a group of men dressed in suits to “round them all up.” A bag is then thrown over Shadow’s head and his wrists and ankles are bound with tape. Shadow is taken to a small room with no windows and left alone for hours. Finding he still has coins in his pocket, Shadow practices coin tricks to pass the time and keep his attention so that he can’t worry about whether whoever kidnapped him is going to kill him. Eventually, he takes out the silver Liberty coin and just holds it, waiting.

At three in the morning, two men in suits come in to Shadow’s cell, one with nice-looking hair and bitten fingernails, and the other with glasses and well-kept nails. The men ask how long Shadow has been working for “Cargo,” which they clarify is their name for Wednesday. Shadow tells the men that he has known Wednesday for three days, and one of the men twists Shadow’s ear painfully, telling him not to lie to them. The two men start a good-cop, bad-cop routine, one asking Shadow to cooperate while the other man punches him. Shadow asks their names, to which they answer Mr. Stone and Mr. Wood.

Mr. Stone gives Shadow a Snickers bar and asks Shadow to explain what happened at the House on the Rock. Shadow refuses to answer, so Mr. Wood starts beating him. Shadow knows that he could take on both men and incapacitate them, but refuses to let his mind go to that kind of violence again. Shadow clutches his Liberty coin until the beating finally stops. Mr. Stone gives Shadow one more warning to cooperate and then leaves Shadow alone in the cell.

Shadow falls into a restless sleep on the small cot in his cell and dreams that he is 15 again, watching his mother die. He wakes and wonders if Wednesday has been caught as well, then notices that the Liberty coin is still in his hand and still cold. The coin makes Shadow think of Zorya Polunochnaya, and he is able to fall back to sleep soundly.

When Shadow wakes again, Laura is shaking his shoulder. For a minute, Shadow thinks that this entire adventure was a dream and he is at home with Laura, where he belongs. Then he notices that Laura is covered in blood, which she says comes from the guards she murdered. Shadow is disturbed, but Laura says that taking a life is no longer a big deal now that she herself is dead. Laura tells Shadow to leave while he can. Shadow notices that Laura still has the gold coin, now hanging from a chain at her neck.

Shadow thanks Laura for protecting him, then opens the door in the corridor to find that it leads outside and that he is in an old abandoned railroad car parked in a forest. He asks how Laura found him here, and Laura says that Shadow is a beacon in the darkness for her. Shadow remembers Zorya Polunochnaya’s advice, and asks Laura what she wants. Laura says that she wants to be alive again, fully. Shadow says that he will try to figure that out, but Laura has already disappeared. Shadow sees the sun rising in the east, turns himself towards the south, and begins to walk.