I, Freddy by Dietlof Reiche: Hamster Religion?

My sister gave me this book, I, Freddy, by Dietlof Reiche. It's hilarious. It tells the story of a hamster personified, who tries to be a hero and escape from captivity. He is much more intelligent than the other hamsters and encounters many funny adventures. It has so much humor in it; I laugh every time I read a little bit. For example, the hamster writes the story from first person as if he has never written anything before. He tries to justify how he writes things by explaining that this is his first time being an author. For example, he says, "There, and I'd really meant to write about the Golden Hamster Saga at this point. Still, as an author (okay, a budding author), I can imagine that my readers would prefer an action sequence first." (4). This is a great way of allowing children to relate to the story even better. He doesn't claim to be some far off, intelligent writer, but he puts himself on the level of the children: someone who has never written anything that's been published before, just someone who wants to tell a story.

There is one thing that really bothers me about the book though. It seems to parody religion quite a bit. In one chapter, it tells the story of the The Saga, which parodies the Creation story of the Bible. In it the Golden Trinity, three golden hamsters, were abducted from the Promised Land of Assyria. They were held captive, but they multiplied into the race of hamsters that is still held in captivity today by the humans. Every golden hamster on earth is descended from them. Someday, there will be the Golden Hamster Liberation Day (parodying the Second Coming) when all the golden hamsters will be released from their cage and led back to the Promised Land of Assyria.

This story seems funny, right? Hamster religion. It made me laugh at first. But then Freddy, the main character in the story, started questioning the teller of the story (his grandmother) about it because it doesn't make sense to him. He doesn't see how Liberation Day could be organized and questions the existence of the Promised Land at all. Grandmother agrees. She says that it's really just a fairy tale and the only reason it is passed down through the generations and hamsters are told to stand in readiness for Liberation Day is to keep them in check. Hamsters are greedy creatures, she says, and the only way to protect from themselves is to tell them to believe in a fairy tale.

I don't know about you, but it sounds like Deitlof Reiche doesn't have a religion, doesn't it? Perhaps he thinks religion is a good thing for society, but it seems to be a fairy tale to him.

I don't really like the book much anymore.