American Gods Walk the Green Mile

Shadow Moon at first sight seems to be drifting in the wind following whatever crazy path people lead him down. Shadow easily gives in to what people want him to do. It seems to be that he will believe anything Laura says and often keeps his thoughts to himself. If he feels any anger Shadow’s nature is to hold it in. Mr. Wednesday on the other hand seems to push the limits of Shadows calm and quiet demeanor. When Mr. Wednesday has Shadow running all sorts of errands we see Shadows expression towards others is provoked and comes out a little more each time. 

This character Shadow portrays is not unlike John Coffey in The Green Mile. John Coffey is a man falsely accused of a crime and plays someone of a “Jesus” figure throughout the movie and is put on death row for his crimes. Shadow is accused of a crime which is justified in protecting his wife. In the same way, John Coffey also seems to drift in the wind doing what he is told without any complaints or remarks. John keeps to himself and is calm and quiet. 

Not only are these two characters similar in personality but they both connect in the fact that they each have a unique sense of special abilities. We begin to see the start of Shadow’s abilities when he shows his power by making it snow. John Coffey has his own unique set of abilities where he has the power to take away people’s illnesses or any physical problems. These abilities are both supernatural and obviously seen as coming from a higher power. Both John Coffey and Shadow Moon have good intentions with their powers but often times people around them are trying to manipulate them and threaten their lives for malevolent purposes. Each character has pasts that haunt them. 

Shadow is haunted by his dead wife Laura and John is haunted by the people he is not able to save. Because of this their enemies are able to use their tortured pasts against them to manipulate Shadow and John for their own good. Percy Wetmore, one of the prison guards in The Green Mile, is one of the cruelest officers on duty at the prison and consistently torments John Coffey along with the rest of the prisoners. Percy uses their crimes to cause further emotional damage and usually loses his temper and often hurts the prisoners. Percy has a malicious and evil side to him that cannot be fully contained.

 However, as with Shadow, the prison guard in charge is also nasty towards the prisoners always taunting racist slurs and profanities. On top of this, Shadow now has Mr. Wednesday as a leading figure in his life and often gets him into trouble. Mr. Wednesday pressures Shadow into thinking that this life is now the only one he has. In both cases, it seems to be that John Coffey and Shadow Moon are sealed to an inescapable fate. Eventually they will have to come to terms with what they have been accused of and things that have haunted them in their past because their punishment is coming whether or not it is justified.

Odin vs. Women: Warcraft Edition

  I would like to talk about the representation of Norse mythology within popular media, specifically about the character Odyn inte in the MMO World of Warcraft. In this interpretation of the character, his origins and backstory are very different, but his personality and primary motivation (to prevent/prepare for the end of the world) are still the same. As part of his plan to stop the apocalypse, he decides to create a flying fortress known as the Halls of Valor (Valhalla). He accomplishes this with the aid of a sorceress, his adopted daughter Helya. His next step is to figure out how to recruit his immortal army. Like the original Odin, Odyn is constantly in search of new knowledge, and he decides to take this opportunity to learn more about the nature of death. Odyn decides to create a task force of damned souls who do not fully exist in either the realm of the living or the dead, so that they can carry the spirits of the fallen to the Halls of Valor. Helya objects to this, and threatens to crash the Halls into the ground if he does not change his mind. Odyn immediately kills her and turns her into the first of the Val'kyr and uses magic to bind her to his will.

Odyn

  Helya does eventually manage to break free along with many other Val’kyr, and traps Odyn and his army inside the Halls. She then creates her own realm Helheim underwater, and dedicates the next few thousand years to murdering heroes and claiming their souls so that Odyn can’t have them. According to the Poetic Edda, Brunhild was imprisoned by Odin for killing his champion, and it seems that the main cause of his anger with women is that they make decisions and interfere with his plans. What is really interesting to me is that Helya incorporates aspects from a few different Norse goddesses, and all of them compete with Odin over control of the afterlife. Most obvious is the comparison to Hel, a death goddess who has dominion over those who die dishonorably, usually from sickness or old age. Like the Val’kyr, she is half dead and half alive. Next is Freyja/Freya, who receives half of the souls from battlefields, while the other half go to Odin. According to some sources, she is also the queen of the Valkyries, which fits with Helya being the original and most powerful Valkyrie. “Helya” also appears to be combination of “Hel” and “Freya”. Finally, Helya’s design and visual theme are mostly likely based off of Ran, a sea goddess who is associated with drowning. Ran carries a net which she uses to drag sailors into the water.

Helya

  After Helya’s rebellion, Odyn attempts to rewrite history by claiming that she was turned into a monster by her own magic, and then begged to work as a Valkyrie as part of her atonement.  At some point, a new Val’kyr queen shows up, named Eyir. Where she came from is currently unknown, but she is entirely loyal to Odyn and serves as a kind of proxy for him as the head of a religion which revolves around training shield-maidens to willingly become Val’kyr. She goes along with Odyn’s plans, including an assassination attempt on a woman named Sigryn, whom Odyn does not want to become the future queen of her people. This is based on a prophecy that she will either save her people or doom them forever, and he is unwilling to take that chance. She survives, and becomes ruler. There are a lot of similarities with Hela from Thor: Ragnarok. After helping to establish the kingdom, both become a threat to it and are imprisoned in some way. “Proud to have it, ashamed of how he got it.” – Hela, Thor: Ragnarok. 

The Halls of Valor

Bonus: Black Hymdall

https://wow.gamepedia.com/The_Legend_of_Odyn

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%A1n