In “The Inexplicable Logic of My Life” by Benjamin Alire Sáenz, is a story viewed through the eyes of Salvador Silva, who is just coasting about life, right until his senior year begins. He had never questioned himself or his existence, until a great number of problems arise, and Sal cannot sustain the burden of them all simultaneously. He can find a small sliver of refuge within his friend group, consisting of Sam, a dedicated student and bad boy lover, and Fito, a boy who is so incredibly intellectual despite being a second away from living on the streets. Due to all of the events throughout the course of the novel, Sal experiences a truly uplifting change of heart and mind, and a newfound sense of maturity, which could not have been achieved without his internal and external struggle.

The story itself has not properly begun and the reader is aware of two characters already: Mima and the narrator. By now one could infer that Mima is an essential character in this story, and that inference would be correct. Many of the crucial plot points include her, to some extent. Mima was extremely close to Sal, and was a person Sal cared deeply for. She is one of the people that influenced him the most, her words and thoughts molding Sal’s personality and soul. Their affection is demonstrated in one of Sal’s memories: “I have a memory that’s almost like a dream. The yellow leaves from Mima’s mulberry tree are floating down like giant snowflakes.” (Sáenz, 1) He basks in her comforting presence, holding him the way gravity holds Earth in place. Mima begins to slip away from Sal’s grasp, and as soon as Sal feels her leave, he begins to fall apart, slowly but surely.

“I wondered if happiness would go when she died”, (Sáenz, 82) Sal states, perplexed about having to go one with his life without her existing. Sal then has an influx of new feelings: grief, loneliness, and rage. Rage towards God for taking her away, for not letting her live forever. “I even wanted to hit God because he was taking my Mima away” (Sáenz, 110) he thinks. He acknowledges that way he feels is selfish, like a “five year old boy with a greedy heart who wanted his grandma to live forever.” (Sáenz,103) His mind is crammed with strange thoughts and foreign feelings, and naturally has to find an outlet for it, like how a plethora needs bloodletting for it to be cured. For him, his outlet becomes physical violence. Although not initially, Sal realizes that this is is not the “good boy” people knew him as, it was as if anger took over every aspect of his being. He could only feel the pain in his heart leave when he threw punches.

Sal tries to spend more time with Mima, going over to her house regularly and doing things they both enjoy, like making tortillas. This makes him reflect on the people he loves: his father, his friends, and the mother he never got to know. He depends heavily on these people for support. He feels as if “everything looked normal on the outside. On the inside, there was some kind of hurricane spinning around.” (Sáenz, 123). He tries to do the things she loves, like go to midnight mass, and make 150 “luminarias” (paper bags with a votive candle placed inside.) He wants to see her happy in her last days, and tries to cling onto her final moments of happiness. He compiles a the moments he will remember when she departs, including things that he takes for granted daily, like her voice: “I recorded part of the of the phone call, and Mima didn’t know it, so her voice would never be extinct.” (Sáenz, 384)

Sal begins to wonder about death and its twisted ways. “Maybe that’s what death sounded like. Like a snowflake falling on the ground.” (Sáenz, 293) He wants Mima to leave with “all of the grace of the old world.” (Sáenz, 414) Sal enters a conflicted state, in between his dreams and the harsh whiplash of real life. Towards the finalization of the novel, her condition deteriorates increasingly, to the point she can no longer speak clearly, or move, and when it happens, it is sorrowful and swift. Mima’s soul vanishes into thin air and Sal could not be more heartbroken. Even his father, endlessly hopeful, falls apart at the sight of his mother’s rigid and uninhabited body. The inevitable was unavoidable and Sal was not there to prevent it from happening. Sal feels hollow and empty inside. His soul feels barren, like a farm consumed by the frost of winter, withering. He began to isolate from the people he held dearest. Mima always gave Sal love he took for granted. She would pry her way into Sal’s heart, telling him that he should let himself be loved. Now, he realizes it. Sal grew from the needy and upset boy he once was, to a mature adult who can face the inevitable with rationality. Even though Mima’s story had a distressing effect towards Sal, he learned from the feelings he felt and experiences he went through.

In addition to the grief he was feeling, Sal had a volatile outlet for his bottled up pain. He had to release his pent up frustration before he broke down completely. For him, that was fighting. He was vexed with life, and the crazy nonsensical logic of it. He would begin a fistfight with anyone who offended him or the people he loved. In the introductory scenes, he punches a boy for being extremely closed-minded and rude to his father. He wanted to prove that his father was “not that word.” (Sáenz, 11) However, his father was less than pleased. He tells Sal that “no one deserves to be physically attacked just because he said something you didn’t like.” (Sáenz, 13) Sal very explicitly disagrees with this statement, believing that people who do bad things should not get away with them. He will get into a fight for the most petty reasons, things like a name-call will get his blood heated. He knows he is not thinking clearly. When anger consumes his mind, he has to let it out before something even worse occurs. A good way to illustrate this is during his friend Fito’s mother’s funeral service. Sal gets in an altercation with one of his cousins. It was practically like a reflex, “like a bomb going off.” (Sáenz, 357) After this quarrel of theirs, Sal finally comes to the conclusion that the real Sal, somewhere along all of those punches and hurt feelings, had run missing. He was in a state of stasis. He wanted to get his life back on track again, to find the strayed Sal, and to never see the aggressive imposter that was currently residing in his body. Sal’s change in personality are vital to the blossoming of his adulthood and capacity to think straight. His mentality grows, transitioning from the one of a boy to the one of a man. This was an opportunity for him to develop different qualities and virtues, and experience a development in character.

Furthermore, Sal has to deal to all of the stress by himself, and additionally the struggles of his friends, Sam and Fito. Their lives are as chaotic as Sal’s, if not more. They all bond over their losses, the gaping hole in their families, their heritage, and misfortunes. It all intensifies when Sam’s mother passes away, and she takes it very heavily. She used to take her mother for granted, constantly saying that she was “sick of Sylvia.” (Sáenz, 123) They got into arguments frequently, and Sam kept a large distance with her. But until her passing, Sam becomes conscious about how much here mere existence and presence affected her. She feels lonely in the world with her mother and father both gone. Sal wants to show her that she will never be solitary as long as Sal is beside her. He provides her with a safe place for the remainder of the story, physically and metaphorically. She confides in Sal, describing the wave of sentiment she is hit with occasionally. They can relate to each other, and understand each other on an intimate level. They share the pains of mourning, and of loss.

Even though they are best friends, sometimes arguments arise due to the platonic intimacy they share. For instance, when Sam reunites with the boy who assaulted her at a party, Sal began to yell at her, letting her know that it was a bad idea, and Sam tells him she can do whatever she likes with her life. Sam gets infuriated quickly, and out of the tension of the moment slaps Sal. The love that Sal and Sam share is one of a tough nature, much like the one Sylvia and Sam used to share. Even Sal knows that Sam had to slap him: “Love is a friend who slaps you when you need to be slapped.” (Sáenz, 297) They overcome their predicaments together, and survived their journey of their lives, the brightest and darkest parts. They guide each other towards the light at the end of their tunnel, looking for clarity, and to comprehend the ways of the world, and how to bend the crazy logic of their lives.

Fito is a great contributor to the plot as well. His calamitous past is not one many people survive, but he does. Even his dark background does not stop him from wanting to accomplish his dreams. Considering his family is full of addicts and he is working two jobs, he is a surprisingly well-rounded boy. He has the mindset and vocabulary of a poet, but the experiences and street knowledge of a thug. His family- if one could call it that- is remarkably dysfunctional that he was kicked out for only living there, making him homeless, making his situation even more dire. One of his life-long dreams is to graduate high school and enter college. He does not want to be lowered to the status of his family members, doing cocaine on the daily. Because of the situation he was placed in, street knowledge is above scholarly topics. He would much rather survive, and how would he when “I’m talking like a f---ing book?” (Sáenz, 431) Fito has to “dumb himself down” (Sáenz, 431) in order to navigate life. When he experiences the death of his mother due to overdose, he does not take it as heavily as Sam did, but is still lachrymose, since it was his mother, and they will always be family, drug addict or not.

The friend group not only grieves together but survive together, going through melancholy and pain, but also sharing the occasional optimistic points as well. They need each other for comfort and encouragement, to catch each other in case one falls. They came out of their sadness new people, having outlasted the death with a new revitalized state of mind. The impact they were exposed to will modify they way they will continue to live and their personalities.

Sal and his friends experience problems so moving that they emerge as new people altogether. Sáenz teaches the reader that in situations you cannot think you will endure, you will come out them learning something and gaining a new perception on life. For Sal, he obtained a new mindset- the one of a grown man- and a new outlook towards the people he loves. He realizes that life does not always go the way that we think it will, that life is not like a highway, “all nice and paved, with signs telling you which way to go.” (Sáenz, 295) Life can be unexpected, illogical, and spontaneous, but just living through it can make anyone a survivor.