47 pages • 1 hour read
Neil GaimanAnansi Boys
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Charles “Fat Charlie” Nancy
“Fat Charlie” is the protagonist of Anansi Boys, a Black man who immigrated from America during his childhood and grew up in England. Unbeknownst to him, he’s also the son of the trickster god Anansi. His name is a misnomer because he was only fat very briefly, but the nickname clung to him throughout his life. It’s this relationship with the nickname his father gave him that opens his understanding to The Power of Names. By the end of the story, he reclaims his own name as he comes into his heritage and power.
At the beginning of the story, Fat Charlie is a classic everyman character: generally good but flawed, caring but juvenile, unambitious and not always aware of the feelings of others. He dislikes his boss, Grahame Coats, but cannot see the true extent of Grahame Coats’s criminal practices. He is passive and allows life to happen to him rather than taking proactive action, which we see in his childhood experiences with his father, his stagnant career, and his early meetings with Spider. When his weak attempts to dislodge Spider from his life fail, he makes his first real proactive action in going to his elders for help and subsequently making a deal with the Bird Woman. While this action instigates the major conflicts of the plot and makes his life more challenging, it also marks the beginning of his internal journey towards a more confident, fulfilled self.
When Fat Charlie and Spider first meet, Fat Charlie sees them both as two unfinished halves, which represents the Duality of the Self. However, he learns to see himself as a complete being with weaknesses and strengths. He begins his personal transformation around the midpoint of the novel, reaching a major turning point when he sings in front of Daisy and Grahame Coats—overcoming his fear of performance and saving his friend with a choice that would have been at home in an Anansi story. He then comes into his potential completely when he goes to confront the Bird Woman and save Spider, outwitting a predatory dragon. He introduces himself as “Charlie Nancy,” after which point the name “Fat Charlie” is not mentioned again. This shows that he has shed his old limitations and obtained a new level of actualization.
Spider
At the beginning of the novel, Spider is presented as a foil character in direct opposition to Fat Charlie. He is smooth, confident, and exuberant where Fat Charlie is awkward, unfulfilled, selfish, and unscrupulous. He treats life—and women—like a buffet specially laid out for his enjoyment. After he reconnects with his brother and with Rosie, he begins to rediscover his humanity.
His character arc mirrors Fat Charlie’s journey. While Fat Charlie works towards embracing his magic and self-confidence, Spider’s story focuses on him overcoming the selfishness and superficiality that defined his life previously. This path begins when he starts to feel guilty for the misfortune he’s inflicted on Fat Charlie, a previously unknown sensation; however, his major turning point comes when he realizes he wants more from Rosie and acknowledges the truth about humans under divine control. He understands that a Rosie coerced into loving him wouldn’t be a complete person, and it wouldn’t be the woman he loves. This new awareness brings new depth to his character and puts him on his path to redemption.
Because Spider begins in a less sympathetic place than Fat Charlie and has more antagonistic weaknesses to overcome, his character arc is by necessity more violent and chaotic. One of the novel’s darkest points comes when Spider has his tongue torn out by the Bird Woman; this moment represents how far he has fallen from the man who first blew into Fat Charlie’s life. As the Bird Woman and Tiger’s target, Spider is forced to repair his family relationship with Fat Charlie to save himself. By the end of the novel, he’s become a better man with relatable human uncertainties and vulnerabilities, and as a reward has the authentic relationship with Rosie he desired.
Rosie Noah
Rosie is Fat Charlie’s fiancée at the opening of the novel and is characterized by her humanitarian nature. She is both physically and emotionally just beyond reach for Fat Charlie; she has determined that she won’t sleep with him until after they’re married, and her lackluster attraction to him is largely fueled by contention with her mother. Although more confident and self-assured, her approach to life is as restrained as Fat Charlie’s. Later, she admits to herself and her mother that she never loved him.
Her relationship with Spider encourages her to open up to her own desires and passion for living. While she initially thinks she’s still with her fiancé, she recognizes a change in the way she feels about him. In this stage, Rosie is less of a prop for Fat Charlie’s story and more a fully formed person. As she reaches her crisis point in Grahame Coats’s cellar, she overcomes her sense of betrayal by the brothers and admits she has fallen in love with Spider. This moment allows her to grow to become more honest with herself and to begin breaking down the barriers between her and her mother.
Grahame Coats
Grahame Coats is the novel’s primary antagonist. Although he begins and ends as a villain, he does undergo an inverted hero’s journey that takes him from an immoral businessman to a cold-blooded murderer. Gaiman has said (in an interview at the back of this edition, and elsewhere) that the murder of Maeve Livingstone marked a turning point for Grahame Coats’s character and for the entire story; the scene brought the novel from a dark comedy into something grittier and more horrific, and Gaiman was forced to restructure the final section of the story.
Grahame Coats exhibits a sycophantic geniality and often speaks in clichés, illustrating both a need to be liked and an absence of imagination. There are moments that foreshadow his connection with Tiger and Tiger’s increasing influence on him. The moment when he kills Maeve is freeing, representing a Duality of the Self: “It did not bother him to have killed. It felt instead, immensely satisfying, like something he has needed to do to feel complete. He wondered if he would ever get to do it again” (206). Like Fat Charlie coming into his power, this moment opens up new possibilities for Grahame Coats and offers him new insight into what he can become.
By the time he merges with Tiger for the story’s climax, he has already descended fully into his animal instincts and left his humanity behind, making him the perfect vessel. After his death, he retains a different animal form and is poetically placed in the same subservient powerlessness that he inflicted on those around him during life; his fate is to exist in a constant cycle of Death of Rebirth.
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By Neil Gaiman
