Alright this is a letter to Neil Gaiman about his novel American Gods and how it affected/changed/taught me. I'm doing it for a national competition so please tear it apart. The maximum length of the letter is supposed to be about 800 words and this is about 1400 so I'll have to cut it back, if you see something that can be shortened or is repeated often enough, feel free to let me know. Thanks! I'm not putting my last name on the signature because...well, it's the internet, even if it IS only fanfiction xD. If I win feel free to read the letter with my full name. Cheerio!
Dear Mr. Neil Gaiman,
The gods are everywhere to me now, thanks to you. I hear them in the whisper of the American wind and I see them in the dreams that your book inflicted of old, dry places. These gods live in and around us. They live in our iPods and our potato chips and our churches and they feed off of our enjoyment, interactions, and inspirations that come from them. For gods are cultures and Americans worship many things. Sometimes because of this, the culture-gods become jealous and wage war. It's a culture war, Mr. Gaiman, and your American Gods convinced me to join.
But which cultures are we fighting? Mythology? Modernism? Even both? We no longer sacrifice our bodies to tribal gods but we sacrifice our souls to the media and the economy and our religion. After closing the final pages of your novel I had several questions, the most paradoxical being the following: how do we fight a culture that controls us? I thought about it and my verdict was comforting. Culture doesn't control us. We have the ability to choose our culture, although once created it is a free spirit. And in turn, it is an independent leader that we may follow if we wish but will not control us either. It's good to know that although we can at times lack inspiration and creativity and intelligence, we at least are able to turn away if we wish. When we do turn away and choose a new culture, the old and new clash and rebel, a fight to win. This is the culture war. When the new finally wins, those important culture aspects we slowly reject become symbols—a small reminder of a world forgotten.
And many things have been forgotten and lost. There are worlds of untold stories and ideas, and people and places that lie alone in the cold but 'futile' American soil. Of course what they're really doing is rotting in the dumpster of American history that textbooks will never dare approach. As I stumbled my way through AP World History last school year, I was amazed at the scores of people that had died in battle and plague and bloodbaths by merciless dictators. It seemed at least the majority of people that died of unnatural rather than natural deaths. There were so many people in the world and we haven't scratched the surface of even a single percent of them. This deeply affected and offended me. If 99 percent of all people want their stories told and only 1 percent gets this privilege, what of me? I want to change the world. I want to be remembered. But who am I in America when there are whole towns in cities in this large nation that no one else even knows exists? The truth is, no matter how important a person or place is, it can be truly forgotten. This scares me. We haven't only forgotten ideas either. We've forgotten why we do things. We just do them. It's ritual to us, not tradition. Why? Because we've forgotten why the tradition existed. Why do we put up pine-trees in our home during the winter holidays? Few of us might remember or bother to look up the information, but do we really put up the Christmas tree because a monk in seventh century Germany used its shape to represent his religion? No! We put it up because we've been doing it so long that it would ruin the atmosphere of the season if we didn't. We've forgotten why. The history we do know about ourselves we idealize—even the parts we're 'ashamed of'. The full extent of the filth of our crimes rarely goes advertised. After all, who wants to hear it? The perpetrators cover it up, and the offspring of victims cover their ears. Not me, though. I'm going to tell people. I'm going to do what the forgotten cannot. I am going to unleash these stories and listen, in return, to the untold stories around and before me. I won't take details for granted. I will remember.
Just as you've taught me that things can be forgotten, Mr. Gaiman, so you've also taught me that some things are just as timeless. Human minds might shift and change, but not their souls. There's an ingredient in them that keeps them steady, constant. It might be God. It might be the root of all culture-gods. It might be life. Whatever it is, it has a way of restoring and preserving values and ideals that one might have expected would die along with culture. Words like 'impossible', 'love', 'death', and 'sexuality' will never go out of date. They are rules that America clings to for security. But all rules can be broken. For instance, once the truly impossible happens undeniably in front of our eyes, many of us will believe or accept anything without suspicion. Shadow's human reaction to the sudden exposure of a bizarre mythological world shocked and enlightened me as I realized I would do the same. Once our most precious rules have been broken, they've been proved they are more powerful than us, thus we are subservient. To the dead gods that have been turned into symbols—some might say they've been forgotten, but symbols live on—almost a culture in themselves. With symbols, the formula is simple. One thing equals all things. George Washington's head is on the out-print of a dollar bill because one leader of America equals all leaders of America. My beliefs have been expanded and constricted because of this book. When the buffalo man who was the land roared 'believe everything,' in response to Shadow's question, I nodded—wide-eyed and numb—as if he were speaking to me. I believe in the untold stories. I believe in the media god. I believe in leprechauns that can freeze to death in Chicago and the greatest sacrifice that the modern generation is really able to make. The gods are everywhere. My eyes see them, my mind acknowledges them. I am now a skeptic only to those who try to dissuade my beliefs.
That's the way many things are portrayed in these modern times, however. In American Gods, there were new gods such as Media, Mr. Town, and Computer. Known as the Opposition to Wednesday and Nancy, these gods provoked the culture war. They wanted us all to themselves as we wanted them. True, Americans are disgustingly materialistic in comparison to poorer countries, but it's a simple cause and effect equation. We get it, we like it, we want more. It's no longer greed; it's a standard of living. Media, money, and popularity even, we have it and we don't expect it to leave. Sometimes the media lies to us or steers us wrong or flat out tells us what to do. Computers steal our work ethic. Money makes us proud and popularity makes us insensitive. For some people, the sheer methodology of these things catch people off guard and they get swept into a myriad of colors like technology and artificiality. There's some magic left in this technical world, though. It goes back to the mysterious element in our souls that won't let some things die. Technology wants so badly to eliminate the possibility of resurfacing real magic so it keeps changing, in hopes that one day the future will be so contorted with steel and wires that the word magic will be extinct. And in that journey, it will have to corrupt itself further than it already has. This makes politics tricky for me. I can no longer support a person who boasts of being so drastically able to change this country and instead look for people who can preserve what's left of it. What else is there to change, anyhow? Is there any other way you can pervert our sense of right and wrong, politicians? Any other bans or legalities to put into place to make someone else feel better? That's the way we work now, Mr. Gaiman. We decide on what's right and wrong based on how we or others feel. Not on justice, tradition, or simply what used to be right or wrong.
This is Us, Mr. Gaiman, in all of our American glory. We are cunning and insecure; we are materialistic and war-torn. We aim for feelings yet we forget the most important stories. We are SHADOWS, rays of darkness following our light and physical patterns. Blind and ritualistic. I do not pity America's present, but I will do anything I can to help recover its past. Thank you so very much, Mr. Gaiman. It was an honor being enlightened by you and your book. The people I witness to about what I've learned may not want to hear or remember what I have to say, but please trust me when I say that I will never forget.
Sincerely,
Lorie.
Please read and critique!