Anansi Boys

“It was, he knew, irrationally, because his father had given him the nickname, and when his father gave things names, they stuck.”

Even early in the novel, Fat Charlie becomes aware of The Power of Names. The moment his father calls him “Fat Charlie” mirrors the moment towards the end of the novel where Charlie reclaims his power and his ability to name himself.

“‘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.