Anansi Boys

“‘He’s not a bad man,’ said Fat Charlie’s mother, with a twinkle in her eye. Then she frowned. ‘Well, that’s not exactly true. He’s certainly not a good man. But he did me a power of good last night,’ and she smiled a real smile and, for just a moment, looked young again.”

Fat Charlie’s mother’s observations encapsulate Anansi as a character both in the novel and in traditional folklore, as well as the trickster archetype as a broader whole. These characters are neither inherently bad nor good, but they have the power to do good for others in the right circumstances. This also communicates the idea that a character doesn’t need to be good or bad to make good choices.

“It was no longer simply a wedding: it was now practically a humanitarian mission, and Fat Charlie had known Rosie long enough to know never to stand between his fiancée and her need to Do Good.”

This moment introduces the reader to the defining feature of Rosie’s character. Unlike the trickster figure of Anansi and the complexity of his children, Rosie sees the world in terms of good and evil with a clear idea of which side she belongs to. This makes her an effective foil to the other morally ambiguous characters in the story.

“When he was a little boy he had truly believed that Mrs Dunwiddy was a witch. Not a nice witch, more the kind kids had to push into ovens to escape from.”

This moment early in the novel foreshadows Mrs. Dunwiddy’s magic and her betrayal. She is a witch of some sort, however, her temper was the reason Spider was sent away. Foreshadowing is a literary device that’s used often throughout the early half of the story.

“...beside it, a photo of Fat Charlie himself, aged perhaps five or six years old, standing beside a mirrored door, so it looked at first glance as if two little Fat Charlies, side by side, were staring seriously out of the photograph at you.”

This photo would have been taken around the time when Fat Charlie and Spider separated; it is not specified whether this is before or after, so it is left to the reader’s interpretation whether the picture shows a mirror or two boys. Mirror images become a recurring motif in the novel, and this moment hints at the conflicts to come.

“Anansi gave his name to stories. Every story is Anansi’s. Once, before the stories were Anansi’s, they all belonged to Tiger (which is the name the people of the islands call all the big cats), and back then the tales were dark and evil, and filled with pain, and none of them ended happily. But that was a long time ago. These days, the stories are Anansi’s.”

This snapshot of a larger folkloric tale alludes to the underlying power of stories to shape the world. It also suggests a larger storytelling collective unconscious, in which all stories, however unrelated and sprawled across time, can have their root at one universal source.

“There are myth-places. They exist, each in their own way. Some of them are overlaid on the world; others exist beneath the world as it is, like an underpainting.”

This idea of the world existing in layers encompasses the thematic idea of myths and stories shaping the world, as well as succinctly summarizing Gaiman’s body of work. Most of his novels, including this one and its partner story American Gods, exist in the shape of one layer of reality superimposed over another.

“[Rosie] took her mother’s opposition to the marriage as a sign from the heavens that she was probably doing something right, even when she was not entirely sure in her own mind that this was actually the case.”

This concisely sums up Rosie and her mother’s contrarian relationship, as well as hinting at their innate similarities: While Rosie’s mother is characterized as someone who will make a statement for no reason other than to create conflict, here we see how Rosie shares that trait in seeking out conflict with her mother.

“Starfish, said his father, musing. When you cut one in half, they just grow into two new starfish.”

This is one of the story’s first hints about the truth behind Fat Charlie and Spider’s separation. Fat Charlie speaks to his father in a dream, though it is left to interpretation whether he is truly speaking to his dead father, or if he’s tapped into what he already knows on a subconscious level. This moment of foreshadowing allows the reader to begin discerning the deeper truth about the characters.

“It wasn’t that people liked Grahame Coats, or that they trusted him. Even the people he represented thought he was a weasel. But they believed that he was their weasel, and in that they were wrong.

“Grahame Coats was his own weasel.”

Several instances of animal imagery are used to describe Grahame Coats, including that of a ferret, a weasel, and a stoat. They all fit together to create a clear image of the character, and here we see how he embraces that image as a strength rather than rejecting it as a weakness. This moment also provides insight into the Machiavellian and isolationist nature of the character.

“Spider felt odd.

“There was something going on: a strange feeling, spreading like a mist through his life, and it was ruining his day. He could not identify it, and he did not like it.”

This unfamiliar sensation marks the shift in Spider’s humanity. He begins to care for both Rosie and Fat Charlie and starts to reclaim the “Fat Charlie” side of himself from which he was ruptured. Here we see how positive change, though necessary, can often be uncomfortable.

“There was a mirrored gazing ball as well, and when Fat Charlie spotted it he was, only for a moment, as scared as he had ever been of anything.”

This quote supports the book’s motif of mirrored surfaces. This moment foreshadows Fat Charlie’s later discovery about what happened the day he broke Mrs. Dunwiddy’s mirrored ball and the cataclysmic change that was inflicted on him.

“It was not that Tiger was mad; it was that he was so earnest in his convictions, and that all his convictions were uniformly unpleasant. Also, he reminded Fat Charlie of someone, and while he could not have told you who, he knew it was someone he disliked.”

This idea succinctly describes the most effective villains in literature: those who do bad things in the unshakable belief that they are in the right. This moment also foreshadows the connection Tiger will come to have with Grahame Coats.

“Human eyes (unlike, say, a cat’s eyes, or an octopus’s) are only made to see one version of reality at a time. Fat Charlie saw one thing with his eyes, and he saw something else with his mind, and in the gulf between the two things, madness waited.”

The narrator begins by talking about the limitation of human eyes—which, of course, is not a biological limitation but a shortcoming of humanity itself. This moment shows Fat Charlie’s human weakness and juxtaposes the actualized demi-god he will become. The “gulf” between the natural and the supernatural here could be seen as a metaphor for the arc of the story itself.

“Maybe what we do tonight is for the best and maybe it ain’t. Sometimes family things, they best left for families to fix. You and your brother. You’re too similar. I guess that is why you fight.”

Although Spider and Fat Charlie emerged from the same person, they are also brothers and learn some challenging lessons about family. This moment could be seen as a reference to the conflict inherent in family dynamics, but also the internal conflict that arises within the self.

“In the old stories, Anansi lives just like you do or I do, in his house. He is greedy, of course, and lustful, and tricky, and full of lies. And he is good-hearted, and lucky, and sometimes even honest. Sometimes he is good, sometimes he is bad. He is never evil. Mostly, you are on Anansi’s side.”

This idea echoes the earlier statement made by Fat Charlie’s mother in that Anansi is neither bad nor good but is generally a positive force. This description of Anansi gives him a very human quality, which explains why he is such a popular antihero figure and the keeper of all stories.

“He couldn’t have told you how she was different. He had tried, and failed. Partly it was how he felt when he was with her: as if, seeing himself in her eyes, he became a wholly better person.”

Spider continues further on his journey to becoming a fully formed human being with more emotional complexity than before. This moment shows his connection to Fat Charlie as they each become increasingly similar, and it shows the way Rosie affects them both with her positive, humanitarian energy.

“He didn’t want some kind of seething, furious creature, someone who, though she hated him way down deep, was perfectly placid and doll-like and normal on the surface. He wanted Rosie.”

The narrator explores the true nature of the relationship between humans and gods, and Spider’s awareness of the illusions he casts on those around him. This illustrates the pitfalls of a seemingly seductive power and the allure of a more honest, fulfilling relationship. This moment of self-reflection shows the early stages of Spider’s internal growth.

“Daisy was starting to feel like the kind of cop you only ever see in movies: tough, hard-bitten, and perfectly ready to buck the system; the kind of cop who wants to know whether or not you feel lucky, if you’re interested in making his day, and particularly the kind of cop who says, ‘I’m getting too old for this shit’. She was twenty-six years old, and she wanted to tell people she was too old for this shit.”

Daisy is described as petite and pixie-like and treats Fat Charlie with softness and compassion. This moment highlights her contrast—and self-awareness of that contrast—with the more stereotypical portrayals of her societal role. She acknowledges that every stereotype (or, in the context of this novel, every story) comes from a grain of truth, and that anyone can become gritty and jaded under the right circumstances.

“He had kept the identity alive—Basil had a solid credit history, Basil travelled to exotic places, Basil had bought a luxury house on Saint Andrews without ever seeing it. But in Grahame’s mind, Basil had been working for him, and now the servant had become the master. Basil Finnegan had eaten him alive.”

Grahame Coats’s relationship with Basil reflects the one between Fat Charlie and Spider. Although his counterpart is imaginary, Grahame Coats imagined his other half as subservient, a creature created to serve him much like Spider’s seven-legged golem. This moment of self-reflection supports the theme of Duality of the Self, in which two opposing sides of the self can be in conflict. Unlike Spider and Fat Charlie, who come to a mutual understanding and emerge as better people, Grahame Coats has lost control of his other side.

“People take on the shapes of the songs and the stories that surround them, especially if they don’t have their own song.”

The idea of a personal song appears several times and equates to a strongly defined sense of self and purpose. The lesson of this moment, as Anansi tells his story to Maeve, is that people without a strong purpose in life are easily influenced by others. Here, the narrator hints as to the wider repercussions of the re-emergence of Tiger stories, which can be seen as an allegory for those in power in the wider world.

“The word, that would be the hardest part. Making a spider, or something quite like it, from blood and spit and clay, that was easy. Gods, even minor mischief gods like Spider, know how to do that. But the final part of Making was going to prove the hardest. You need a word to give something life. You need to name it.”

The Power of Names is a central theme in the novel, and here the narrator acknowledges it directly by equating name with consciousness. In this moment, the power of names in shaping reality is shown in its most extreme incarnation; however, this idea echoes throughout the story, such as in the names Anansi gave Fat Charlie and Goofy the dog, which shaped their stories.

“Now, he cared less and less, and he sang his song to the fireflies, who followed him up the hillside. It was a song about meeting the Bird Woman and finding his brother.”

This moment takes place shortly after Charlie has reclaimed his name and his power, and the reader sees how he has become more like Spider and Anansi; his journey takes on a folkloric quality as he uses a song to guide him and shape the road ahead. Rather than being an everyman protagonist out of his depth in a supernatural world, he has become at home and complete within this new landscape.

“‘She split us apart, but she never really understood what she was doing. We’re more like two halves of a starfish. You grew up into a whole person. And so,’ he said, realising it was true as he said it, ‘did I.’”

As Charlie and Spider learn what happened to them, they initially believe that they are two incomplete halves of a whole. However, at this point, Charlie has come into his lineage and power, and Spider has learned to make himself vulnerable, and they finally understand that each one is complete in his own way. This moment also reduces Mrs. Dunwiddy from a terrifying crone to a misguided old woman in the boys’ eyes, showing how much Charlie has grown.