The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018

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Themes

The Hard Journey Toward Self-Acceptance

When the young Sam is distraught over his eye color, his mother reassures him, “Our skin, our hair, and our eyes are simply the shell that surrounds our soul, and our soul is who we are. What counts is on the inside” (39). It can take a person a lifetime to gain enough perspective to see and accept who they truly are meant to be. For the protagonist, the journey to self-acceptance comes only through a series of failures and successes, moments of profound joy, and seasons of prolonged pain and suffering. In The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell, author Dugoni traces one man’s life and portrays how living a normal, quotidian existence can still create an exceptional individual. For Sam, perspective brings peace, and he can view his life as extraordinary only once he has lived it.

As a child, Sam found his security and belonging in his family, under the charismatic shield of his mother’s advocacy and his father’s quiet compassion. Their unconditional love and acceptance define his identity. Outside the home, he is open to the judgmental stares and bigoted pronouncements of others, making him doubt his self-worth: “I had a strong sense that I was different, and not in the extraordinary way my mother wanted me to believe” (47). Through Sam’s character, the author explores how individuals seek their worth in the approval of others. The children and adults in Sam’s life fear his condition because they do not understand it. Sam internalizes their ridicule, diminishing his self-esteem. He fears he will never measure up to anyone’s standards for companionship and believes himself fated for a life of loneliness. By the time Sam enters adulthood, his hatred for his physical appearance pushes him to use colored contacts to conceal his eye color. Changing his appearance might placate the public, but Sam cannot solve the problem inside himself by simply making his eyes brown.

Along with Madeline’s unyielding support, Mickie becomes a powerful force in Sam’s life, opening his eyes to his inner worth. She finally tells him, “You deserve better. You use your eyes as an excuse for not believing you could do better and for not standing up for yourself and telling women they’re not good enough for you” (250). Mickie sees Sam’s failed relationships with women as a failure of self-respect. Mickie’s character is one aspect of Sam’s journey to inner peace, but it takes a series of catastrophes to bring Sam to a place of vital self-acceptance. When David brutally murders Trina and an earthquake rocks the city to rubble and kills Eva, Sam must concede he has limited agency over his life. One element he can control, however, is his reaction to the unpredictable tragedies that befall him. The most decisive moment in Sam’s journey to self-acceptance comes when he meets Fernando. Staring into the boy’s face, Sam sees himself, and he cannot help but be overcome with love for the red-eyed child. To love Fernando is to love himself. Sam’s coming of age sees him undergo an intense transformation from an insecure, self-doubting individual to a man at peace with the life he has lived and intent on using his time on earth to make it better for those around him.

The Formative and Transformative Impact of Friendship

Just as Sam moves from self-rejection to self-acceptance, part of his character arc is his journey from alienation to relationship. This voyage is formed largely through irrevocably transformative friendships. Close friendships are integral to a person's social and emotional development, but Sam’s early days in elementary school are lonely, and he invents elaborate fictions to convince his parents he is assimilating and making friends. In showing Sam’s extreme isolation, the author paints a sobering picture of the pain an excluded child endures. Ernie Cantwell’s first extension of friendship is his criticism of Sam’s Twinkie eating technique, but it is enough: “[…] I didn’t question it, swept up in the adventure and thrilled with the idea I was a normal kid doing normal things with my friend” (104). Friendship finds Sam at just the right time, as the rejection and derision from his classmates intensifies into bullying.

Life alongside Ernie becomes Sam’s safe place. He finds the courage to try sports and engage in social activities, all important avenues for his healthy social and emotional development. However, Mickie’s arrival at OLM takes Sam’s concept of friendship to new depths: “We were misfits, the three of us. I didn’t think of us that way back then, but looking back, I know now it was why we gravitated to one another” (220). Mickie and Sam’s companionship offers a rare portrayal of platonic intimacy between teenagers. Their connection later becomes physical, but they build their union first on a solid foundation of trust and understanding. Ernie is always around for Sam, especially to celebrate accomplishments and have fun, but Mickie is present when he needs a voice of truth and comfort in his darkest times. In the end, through his greatest friendship, Sam finds a lover and life companion. Changing from a reclusive boy alone on the playground to a healed and whole human in a loving partnership, Sam Hill is transformed by friendship.

The Mysteries of Faith and Fate

Sam is born into a deeply religious family and raised in strict Catholicism. In his childhood, his mother teaches him to view prayer like a bank account, and as a result, he develops a transactional view of faith. However, when Sam’s prayers for changed eye color go unanswered, his relationship with religion is damaged. Sam’s character undertakes a journey to reconcile the pain in his life with the divine plans of God, and his search for faith represents the universal human struggle to find meaning in existence and find the will to go on when the burdens of life become too heavy.

Fiction often portrays religion as an oppressive and exigent force controlling people’s lives. Conversely, this novel portrays religion as a beacon of hope and peace through the character of Madeline Hill. Madeline never loses her faith throughout all Sam’s struggles. She courageously accepts his condition, not only proclaiming it God’s will but declaring Sam favored and fated for greatness. Sam wants to believe his mother, but he cannot accept a condition that brings him so much pain, asking himself “[w]hat kind of God would allow this to happen to a child” (105). Struggling to believe in a deity he cannot see or comprehend, Sam places all his faith in his mother and hopes it will be enough. Throughout his adolescence, Sam considers his choices not through the lens of religion but by deliberating whether they might hurt his mother. He struggles with faith most of his life, and when a succession of tragedies strikes, he easily casts aside Catholic theology:

[Madeline’s] continued devotion in the face of all that had happened amazed me, but at this point I had concluded that I no longer shared her faith in a God who controlled the universe like a puppet master pulling and tugging strings and making us all dance (317).

Finding answers to life’s greatest questions is important, but Sam learns cultivating faith requires a certain acceptance that he will never have all the answers.

Sam’s crisis of faith begins when his father experiences a stroke, but the murder of Trina Crouch leaves him empty of any affection for prayer or religion: “I no longer believed in God’s will. I had stomached the refrain throughout my youth as an explanation for the bullying and general lack of compassion I had endured […]” (127). Because Sam mistakenly thinks it is his purpose to vanquish the evil that was David Bateman, he takes the tragedy personally and gives up any hope of a compassionate God. His chance encounter with Fernando deep in the Costa Rican jungle moves him to reconsider the possibility of providence. The turning point in Sam’s faith journey comes with his mother’s death. He must undertake a personal journey with faith, not just accept what she taught him as a child. He can no longer rely on his mother’s devotion to save him and keep hope alive. The pilgrimage to Lourdes births a new kind of faith in Sam, one that brings him peace with God and with himself.