In West African culture, Anansi is a cunning god, who takes the form of a spider. He is known to be a cheater and very deceitful. He is considered the god of all knowledge of stories. In other words, Anansi owns all the stories. In Anansi Boys, the main character, Fat Charlie, learns a lot about his past and who he really is. After his father's death, he discovers that his humiliating father was actually the god, Anansi, and that he also has a brother. Charlie eventually meets his estranged brother, Spider, who torments him and seems to ruin his life. She gets him fired from his job, steals his girlfriend and gets him arrested. However, at the end of the novel, we see that through all this torture, Spider has actually helped Charlie move on with his life. In Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys, readers witness Charlie's development and emotional discovery of himself through his brother, Spider, and other outside influences. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Early in the novel, we learn that Charles Nancy has a strong hatred for his father and has good reason for doing so. Mr. Nancy gave Charles the unfortunate nickname, Fat Charlie, and despite the fact that Charlie was only fat for a short time, the name stuck with him because, "when his father gave names to things, they stayed " (Gaiman 3) . Furthermore, Mr. Nancy once convinced Charlie to go to school dressed as President Taft and personally took him to school to see all the other children laugh at him. Charlie's father sang and danced on the beach and convinced him that mermaids existed in the Atlantic. Despite all the embarrassing things Mr. Nancy has done and the emotional scars he has left on Charlie, at the end of the novel we see that Charlie learns to love and care for his father. In an alternate universe where he is still alive, Mr. Nancy even tells Charlie that he loved him. Later in life, Charlie takes his son, Marcus, to the beach in search of mermaids, who it turns out really exist. Together they sing and dance on the beach just like Charlie's father did. The clear change in Charlie's feelings towards his father is a perfect example of how Charlie develops in the novel. In addition to the change in feelings towards his father, Charlie's feelings about his finances also change throughout the novel. Charlie Nancy is engaged to Rosie with whom he thinks he is in love; but at the end of the novel he realizes that he doesn't love her, and Rosie doesn't love him. When Charlie's estranged brother Spider enters his life, he impersonates Charlie and steals Rosie. Once Rosie realizes that she has been with Spider, she recognizes that she enjoys being with him more than being with Charlie and that she really loves Spider. Although Charlie is devastated that Rosie left him, Charlie admits to himself that he was never in love with Rosie. In fact he is in love with Daisy, the policewoman. When she kissed him for the first time, he felt, "there was an oomph behind the kiss that he had never had before in his entire life, not even with 'Rosie'." This was the first clue that Rosie had never really been the right girl for Fat Charlie. As readers, we know that Rosie is really only marrying Charlie as an act of rebellion against her mother. This is one of the major changes Charlie undergoes in the novel. He realizes that he is not in love with his finances, Rosie, and that he was not meant to be with her. In addition to changing how he feels about others, Charlie also gains confidence. At the beginning of the novel, Fat Charlie is a shy man who is afraid to show off his extraordinaryness.