Quem é o Deus sem nome no livro 'American Gods'?

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No romance de Deuses Americanos de Neil Gaiman, muitos dos deuses e outras criaturas mitológicas são reconhecíveis em culturas do mundo real. Com a maioria destes, o link para o mundo real é muito claro (seja por ser chamado de direto ou por características que são facilmente "capazes de pesquisar", mas estou tendo problemas para identificar qual deus um personagem em particular representa.

When Wednesday is recruiting the old gods for his purpose, he goes to Las Vegas and meets a god. People are unable to remember his face but there is a feeling of money about him. He can sense the flow of commerce. Wednesday bribes him with a bottle of Soma, to bring him to his side.

Quem é esse deus? Isso já foi revelado?

    
por KenSuvy 11.09.2011 / 17:44

7 respostas

Bem, isso nunca é respondido diretamente no livro, e Neil o abordou em suas Perguntas frequentes . (Ele foi perguntado, e ia responder, então pediu NÃO responder e concordou.)

Who was the forgotten God?

Okay, so who is the God who everyone forgets after meeting him (or at least, who Shadow forgets)?

For the god whose name everyone forgets in American Gods, is there actually a name? If we search long and hard and scour books and web sites and whatnot, is it possible for us to come up with the right answer? Or will we just be searching in vain?

who's the forgotten God?

     

Eu realmente planejava respondê-lo, mas depois conseguimos ....

     

Okay, so this isn't so much a question as a request for you to not answer a question that other people are probably going to ask.

Please don't reveal the identity of the god/folkloric entity that people always forget, without gigantic neon flashing spoiler signs.

I think I'm really close to identifying him; so I'm living with the daily terror, as I read the journal, of the cat being let out of the bag...

You're a nice author, so I'm sure you understand. Maybe a spoiler section could be set up separately if you do intend to answer this kind of thing? Thank-you!

     

O que eu acho, como apelo sincero, é muito sincero. E eficaz.

Então, se não houver um comentário mais recente em um golpe ou algo assim, acho que qualquer outra resposta será especulação neste ponto, mesmo que seja uma especulação lógica :) Você pode encontrar pelo menos uma discussão sobre isso aqui .

    
11.09.2011 / 19:00

Eu vi no neilgaimanboard.com alguém sugerindo o seguinte:

The "forgettable god" should be Mercury.

More explicitly, the "forgettable god" should be a Hindu deity named Budha, the son of the moon god Soma and Tara, the wife of Brihaspati, or Jupiter. Budha is one of the navagraha (literal nine-planets), or planet-gods in Vedic astrology; to the ancient Roman, he is Mercury.

Much like the Roman Mercury, the Hindu Mercury is a god of two things: wealth and the mind.

He governs commerce, both tangible and intangible; he grants wealth on to his devotees; he removes obstacles in the way of success.

As the god of knowledge, it is Mercury's power to both grant and erase wisdom. The "greatest among the wise," he has the ability to remove thoughts from minds as well as grant inspiration.

The "forgotten god" is a dark-haired, dark-eyed, well-manicured man. Budha had dark hair and dark eyes, and was considered to be the most attractive of the navagraha.

Now is were we really get analytical:

The element mercury, also known as quicksilver, is the only metal that is liquid at room temperature. It is notoriously difficult to contain and is extremely quick to evaporate; the phrase "like trying to hold mercury" is a common euphemism for things which are either easily forgotten, or difficult to contain.

The "forgettable god"'s home is Las Vegas, which Gaiman goes out of his way to describe as a place where money evaporates or melts away, just like all knowledge of the "forgettable god."

If Mercury is both the incarnation of money and knowledge, and mercury is also impossible to contain or retain, you get ... knowledge and wealth that is impossible to contain or retain. The forgettable god.

More details:

The forgettable god wore what Gaiman referred to several times as a "charcoal suit." The only thing that can contain or absorb liquid mercury is charcoal, which is utilized in containers designed to control mercury spills.

Wednesday orders the forgotten god a Laphroaig and water while they're at the bar. Laphroaig is a single-malt Scotch whisky famous for its peaty aroma, the result of a distilling process that involves peat from the local peat bogs used to dry the malt. Mercury is a natural byproduct of peat.

Gaseous mercury is used to create neon lights, which Gaiman notes numerous times are the hallmark of Vegas.

While I've already noted it, I think it's important to restate that Mercury was the son of Soma.

Finally, the Hindu word for Wednesday is derived from Budha's (Mercury's) name, just as our word for Wednesday is derived from Odin's name. This may further explain why Neil made Budha the "forgotten god" - because the book already had a Wednesday. (It also explains Neil's use of the song titled Why Can't He Be You - think about it for a minute - during the scene in the bar when Wednesday and Mercury meet, and why Neil chose to describe the two in such similar terms during that scene.)

Eu acho que essa sugestão é a mais próxima do que eu vi, então estou indo com ela.

Descobri que a pessoa que declarou o supracitado também postou o seguinte:

I'll add that, upon further consideration, I think that "the forgettable god" is supposed to be an embodied combination of all of the different Mercurys: the planet Mercury, the element Mercury, and the Hindi and Roman gods Mercury (who are virtually identical), with a strong leaning toward the Hindi Mercury (which is why Wednesday can bribe him with soma, and why he has dark hair and dark eyes).

The only Mercury that isn't consolidated into the forgettable god, though, is Wednesday. Odin is the Nordic equivalent of Mercury. (For more connections, as I noted, the Hindi word for Wednesday is derived from Budha's name; furthermore, the French word for Wednesday is Mercredi, which comes from the word ... well, I'm sure you can figure it out.)

Wednesday (Odin) is the only Mercury who isn't a god of commerce, which is I think the reason why he is separate from the other Mercury. He is, however, like all the other Mercurys a dispenser and dissolver of knowledge, and by the end of the book you realize that Wednesday is just as hidden and invisible as the forgotten god (both metaphorically, because his true motives are hidden and he's constantly conning people by hiding his true identity under a facade, and physically, because at the end he's just a disembodied voice).

One of the dead giveaways that the forgettable god is Mercury (other than the reference to Soma) is the way that Gaiman describes the interaction between the god and Wednesday during the bar scene - he writes them as warped mirror images of each other. Wednesday is "the man in the light grey suit" and Mercury is "the man in the charcoal (dark grey) suit." Wednesday drinks Jack Daniels, a Tennessee Straight Whiskey (legally defined as bourbon - disputed by distillers as it's own thing), and Mercury drinks Laphroaig, a scotch whiskey. And, of course, there's Why Can't He Be You. I don't think the lyrics are relevant, but I think the song title is - I think it's a distinct reference to the fact that Wednesday should "be" Mercury but isn't.

More important bits to note:

Because the planet Mercury is practically impossible to see with the human eye, the Egyptian name for Mercury is Sbg, 'unknown.'

The conception of Budha caused a war of the gods according to to Hindu mythology.

Budha's consort, Ila, is a lunar goddess. Since Laura's last name is Moon, we can assume that Shadow's last name is Moon, and because he never knew his father Shadow would have had his mother's last name, making his mother a Moon. His mother is described as being dark-haired and dark-eyed, which roughly indicates that his mother looked ethnically like the "forgotten god."

    
11.09.2011 / 18:54

Estou um pouco atrasado para esta festa, mas deixe-me dar um giro. Quando li pela primeira vez os deuses americanos - alguns anos atrás -, fiquei com a impressão de que o Deus Esquecido era Plutão / Hades, deus do submundo. Por que penso isso? Bem - e por favor sinta-se livre para me corrigir - pareço lembrar que esse deus parecia ser rico. Isso se encaixa com o nome Plutão - que significa "rico", "Mr. Moneybags". Como ouro, prata, outros metais e pedras preciosas são desenterrados da terra - o submundo - eles vêm do reino de Plutão, então ele é o mais rico dos deuses. Quanto à parte esquecida, bem, acho que o nome Hades significa "O Invisível" - as pessoas não conseguiam manter a memória de interagir com ele. Ele também não estava dando a aparência de um chefe do crime - uma brincadeira com a palavra "submundo". Esse é o meu palpite.

    
05.07.2017 / 05:40

O KHW está correto porque Gaiman não está dizendo nada, mas um dia ele pode. De seu blog :

As for withholding information... before the Internet, I'd tell anyone anything they wanted to know. ("Who's the missing member of the Endless?" "Destruction." "Oh.") After the Internet, I would try and avoid answering some direct questions because it might spoil things for people. "Why did Delight become Delirium?" "Who's the Forgotten God?" -- they're questions I would happily have answered for anyone who asked at a signing 20 years ago, because it wouldn't have gone any further, not in any way that mattered. Not any longer, because one day I may tell those stories. (If I knew for sure I wouldn't tell them, then I'd happily answer people now.)

    
26.09.2013 / 06:11

Eu acho que é o conceito de "mão invisível" na economia. Eu sei que isso não é exatamente um deus perdoado, mas a teoria é de 1700. E Adam Smith era da Escócia, portanto, lapfroigh e turfa.

    
01.09.2016 / 15:35

Eu li o livro há alguns meses atrás, mas acho que me lembro do deus esquecível sendo o deus anão que tinha cerca de 6 pés de altura que encontrou Shadow depois que a quarta-feira morreu. Ele foi o único que disse que seu "povo" estava pronto para lutar ao lado de Anansi e Cheznobog na batalha que viria e disse que um de seus membros poderia permanecer na vigília de quarta-feira e sobreviver. Tenho certeza que esse é o cara que você está pensando.

    
07.06.2012 / 04:14

Eu achei que o deus era o deus da aleatoriedade. Toda vez que Shadow tenta impor uma ordem a esse deus (como distinguir / lembrar suas características), o esforço falha. O aspecto da aleatoriedade faria naturalmente seu habitat Vegas, cuja existência inteira é construída no acaso, embora em favor da casa.

    
07.04.2017 / 17:48