43 pages • 1 hour read
Nick HornbySlam
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
The Future
In Slam, the future illuminates the novel’s theme of How a Few Seconds Can Change Everything and aids Sam in growing up. Sam is propelled into the future several times, and although he is never certain exactly how or why, he concludes that it must have something to do with Tony Hawk. The first time that Sam awakes in the future, he is jolted into the reality of teenage parenthood when Alicia asks him to help his son calm down in the middle of the night. Sam feels utterly clueless and lost in the moment—all he knows is that he is experiencing what his life might soon be like. The experience is so jarring that Sam runs away for a night, telling no one where he has gone. Sam then sees another future where he is relatively free, succeeding at skating and college, and not hampered by a relationship with someone he doesn’t love. After these experiences, Sam’s perspective on teenage parenthood begins to change, and he starts to accept that he cannot predict what the future holds: “I worked out that there were two futures. There’s the one I got whizzed to. And then there’s the real future, the one you have to wait to see, the one you can’t visit, the one you can only get to by living all the days in between” (226). Day by day, Sam begins to relax and “let the future just happen” (251), because he knows that at any moment, everything could change. Sam gets to see the future one more time, and he sees a future in which a few years have passed, he is in a new relationship, and he and Alicia remain friends. Demonstrating more maturity than he has before, Sam reflects on how much work he will need to do to obtain this more desirable future, but knows that if it weren’t possible, Tony Hawk would never have shown it to him in the first place.
Tony Hawk Poster
Sam’s Tony Hawk poster is a symbol of his goals and aspirations and his love of skating. Sam talks to his poster and imagines what it would say back based on quotes from Tony Hawk’s autobiography. Sometimes Tony Hawk’s replies fit the situation perfectly, and other times they don’t make much sense at all. Sam has moments of doubt in which he wonders whether Tony Hawk is on his side, but in the end realizes that Tony Hawk was trying to teach him something through each of the strange replies and trips to the future. Tony Hawk’s life in some ways mirrors Sam’s, as he loves skating, had his first child relatively young and without a plan, and is driven to constantly improve. Sam admires Tony Hawk because even though he is the world’s best skater, he also has flaws and isn’t afraid to share them with the world: “Tricks are strange. I’m extremely proud of some of the ones I’ve invented, and some of them are hilarious to look back on and wonder what I was thinking at the time” (88).
When Sam jumps into the future and witnesses possible outcomes of his life choices, he believes that Tony Hawk has somehow orchestrated things. There seems to be no other explanation, and Sam looks to Tony Hawk for guidance and wisdom. The first future that Sam sees terrifies him into running away, and when he comes back, he no longer trusts his poster. He eventually comes around and even brings the poster with him to Alicia’s house when he goes to live there. Sam continues traveling into the future and back again, and each time, he becomes wiser and a little more mature. In the end, Sam realizes that Tony Hawk was trying to show him that if these futures exist, then Sam must have made it through this challenging time somehow, and this gives Sam hope and trust in himself.
Skating
Skating (skateboarding) is Sam’s favorite sport and one of his major passions in life. At the beginning of the story, skating is how he spends most of his free time. He is constantly at Grind City or the Bowl, two local spots where he and his friends Rabbit and Rubbish skate together. Skating connects Sam to the city in which he lives: “But skating you do because of the city. We need as much concrete and as many stares and ramps and benches and pavements as you’ve got” (71). Sam insists on referring to the sport as skating, not skateboarding, because the latter doesn’t reflect the laidback nature of the craft. Sam’s hero is Tony Hawk, the world’s most prominent and successful skateboarder. He keeps a poster of Tony Hawk on his wall and reads his autobiography over and over again for inspiration and guidance.
To Sam, skating is about having goals, meeting them, and then surpassing them. It is about self-improvement and courage. All these qualities are things he will need in Navigating Teenage Parenthood, an experience he compares to taking on a trick that is way beyond his skill level: “It was like I’d suddenly woken up to find myself on TH’s skateboard at the top of one of those huge vert ramps. How did I get up here? You’d think. I haven’t been trained for this! Get me down!” (266). The title of the novel, Slam, is a reference to bailing, crashing, or falling off a skateboard. The reference is also a metaphor for what Sam considers to be his most significant and life-changing mistake.
Related Titles
By Nick Hornby
