Sam Character Analysis

Sam is an elderly white man and one of the novel’s narrators. He’s retired after spending more than 30 years promoting pacifism and international cooperation in the nonprofit sector. But even though he’s retired, Sam sees himself as continuing his work—and indeed, he thinks he’s doing even more good in Cleveland than he ever did working on a global scale. He sees it as his duty to “sew[] up the rips in the neighborhood,” which he does by showing people, especially immigrants and Black people, that he’s friendly. In the interest of this, he makes a habit of starting conversations with strangers whenever he’s in public. Sam is amazed when he sees that the city is clearing the vacant lot for a community garden and is the first to declare that the garden is “paradise,” likening it to the biblical Garden of Eden. Sam is unable to do much gardening himself due to his old age, but he hires a number of neighborhood children and teenagers to help him tend his plot. He even gives the Puerto Rican teenager who helps him prepare the soil a row and convinces him to grow pumpkins instead of marijuana. Though Sam remains convinced for several weeks that the garden is indeed paradise and is helping the neighborhood close its divisions, he eventually notices that the gardeners organized themselves so that people from the same country have plots next to each other—and he looks on sadly as people begin fencing in their crops and posting “keep out” signs. This, he suggests, is a sign that the garden isn’t actually paradise and instead is just a microcosm of Cleveland. But despite this, Sam remains dedicated to his mission of fostering community. Later, he hosts and funds a contest in which children can present solutions to the issue of there being no water source in the garden.