Slam

Sam Jones is the protagonist of Slam as well as its narrator, who recounts the story of how he became a parent two years ago as a 16-year-old. He is a dynamic character who undergoes significant personal changes after his girlfriend, Alicia, tells him she is pregnant. Sam is a somewhat unreliable narrator, in part due to his age, and in part due to his feelings about becoming a teen parent. Sam openly admits to manipulating the reader and leaving out information that might make the reader less sympathetic toward him: “Actually, I don’t want to tell you what [she] said. You’ll end up feeling sorry for her, which isn’t what I want” (75). At the same time, he is candid about his failings and insecurities. When he introduces himself, for example, he reveals what he considers to be his most embarrassing qualities: He talks to his Tony Hawk poster, his mother was a teenager parent and his friends seem to have crushes on her, and he becomes a teenage parent himself.

Sam is skeptical of relationships and of adulthood, and while he is a deeply emotional person, he rarely reveals this part of himself, instead opting to stay quiet most of the time: “A lot of things don’t seem worth arguing about to me” (251).