The Body as Miracle and Commodity in Life, and Death, and Giants
The Body as Miracle and Commodity
Ron Rindo’s Life, and Death, and Giants relentlessly examines the tension between the human body as a sacred wonder and as a raw material for exploitation. Gabriel Fisher’s extraordinary size is at once an astonishment of nature, a source of athletic triumph, a medical catastrophe, and a commercial spectacle hawked to global audiences. The novel’s thematic claim is precise: the same body can be perceived as both miracle and commodity, and no amount of awe can wholly protect it from the machinery of fortune and fame. That duality runs from Gabriel’s violent, mythic birth through the barnstorming arenas of professional wrestling to his quiet Amish burial.
A Marvel from the First Breath
Gabriel enters the world as an overwhelming anomaly. The prologue belongs to Thomas Kennedy, a veterinarian who uses livestock surgical techniques to deliver an eighteen‑pound, twenty‑seven‑inch infant after his mother Rachel refuses medical help. The scene is steeped in the language of miracle—a life snatched from prolonged labor, Rachel’s death—yet it is also the moment Lakota’s cherished anonymity begins to dissolve. Thomas’s impromptu miracle later becomes mythologized, a precursor to the world’s hunger to claim Gabriel’s body for its own purposes.
Hannah Fisher narrates the domestic reality of that miracle as Gabriel grows. She records his height on a doorpost the way she once marked Rachel’s childhood; at ten he is six‑feet‑six, at twelve he weighs 255 pounds, at sixteen he carries hundred‑pound ewes under each arm. The Fisher household becomes a physical hymn to his size—raised ceilings, extended bed frames, boots built with removable leather stoppers to accommodate his expanding feet. Hannah sees this as God’s handiwork, yet she is not blind to the burden: “the only flaw in Gabriel’s mastery of the physical world was his inability to correctly gauge the reach of his body.” That flaw is emblematic; the body that delights also destroys doorjambs and, later, lives.
From Football Field to Operating Table
When Gabriel takes the field in high school, his body morphs from private marvel into communal asset. Trey Beathard testifies that Gabriel did “things on the field no one will ever see again,” and the booster club pours fifteen hundred dollars into a custom helmet. The language is frankly commodity‑driven: the body is now a generator of wins, ticket sales, and local identity. No one questions the transaction until the knee injury that ends his football career.
The medical aftermath reveals the sharp edge of the miracle‑commodity split. Billy Walton watches the press conference where the surgeon announces Gabriel’s amputation; the loss is framed as a catastrophe, but also as a launchpad for “incredible advances in prosthetic technology” that will allow him to walk again. The stump is not just a wound—it becomes a demonstration piece for carbon‑fibre marvels. The social worker Danielle later describes microprocessor‑driven limbs that let amputees “run, dance, even swim.” The body, even in its damaged state, is retooled into a showcase for engineered wonder.
Staging the Giant: Wrestling as Global Spectacle
The wrestling chapters escalate commodification into worldwide entertainment. Gabriel, now calling himself Anakim the Amish Giant, bleaches his hair, tattoos a full sleeve, and performs a signature move that lifts opponents “into ‘heaven’” before hurling them into “hell.” Billy Walton replays the YouTube clip again and again, and the novel takes care to report the online frenzy: hashtags speculating about Gabriel’s penis, a million‑dollar offer for a sex tape. The promoter Edward Wainright tells Gabriel, “I’ll make you a millionaire,” and even declares that his prosthetic leg will be “part of the act.”
Hannah Fisher attends a live match with Thomas Kennedy and sees the Sheik of Siam carried in on a palanquin, hears the arena chant “Anakim,” and weeps. Her tears are not simply grief for a grandson who has wandered far from Amish life; they embody the collision between the boy she raised and the brand the world has built. The body on display is no longer a gift from God—it is a revenue stream, a narrative to be scripted, a limb to be customized for the ring.
Yet Gabriel is not an entirely passive victim. He chooses the contract, explains that wrestling “is more ballet than boxing,” and takes pride in his strength. The novel avoids easy moralizing. His complicity underscores that everyone, including the giant himself, participates in the translation of flesh into product.
Death, Dignity, and the Refusal to Sell
Gabriel’s funeral casts the body back into the realm of miracle. The Amish service occurs on a hidden field, hymns are sung, and mourners file past his casket. Crucially, an alderman offers to buy Gabriel’s shoes for a tourist display; the family refuses. The shoes, once custom‑made by an Amish cobbler to fit impossible feet, become a symbol of what cannot be traded. A fossil‑bearing limestone marks the grave, not a monument that invites gawkers. Even in death, the body becomes a quiet rebuke to commodification.
Hannah Fisher closes the story by catching fireflies with her great‑grandson, a ritual of “gentle light and continuity.” Fireflies, like the body, are fleeting miracles that resist capture. They echo Emily Dickinson’s poetry, the epigraph that consigns giants to “Minor—Apparatus—Hopper of the Mill.” Dickinson’s universe reduces grandeur to accidental fame, and Rindo’s novel, while never denying the sacred, reminds us that whatever fame the body achieves is maintained “by Accident that they proclaim.”
Characters and Symbols: A Tapestry of Tensions
The thematic knot is tightened by the characters who orbit Gabriel. Hannah’s secret reading of Dickinson’s poems, her father’s violent shearing of her sister’s hair for vanity, and her own admission of pride over Rachel’s beauty establish a family history in which the body is a test of faith and a source of sin. Josiah Fisher builds ramps and raises ceilings without ever speaking of glory, incarnating a quiet stewardship that contrasts with the world’s avarice. Billy Walton watches Gabriel’s matches with fascination and unease, a stand‑in for an audience that finds the spectacle “ridiculously entertaining” but also grotesque. Thomas Kennedy, who delivered Gabriel as an infant, remains a gentle, sorrowful witness, his eventual move west a kind of release from the weight of that original miracle.
The goat imagery—culling, the “warm blood steaming into the tub,” Gabriel’s “touching gentleness” as he carries the elderly animals—deepens the body‑as‑sacrifice motif. The novel does not pretend the tension can be resolved; it insists only that both the miracle and the marketplace are true.
Study Questions and Answers
1. How does the novel establish Gabriel’s body as a miracle from the moment of his birth?
The prologue frames his delivery as an extraordinary veterinary intervention that borders on the mythic. Hannah’s later narrative tracks his growth through meticulous measurements and household modifications, casting his size as both a divine gift and an ongoing domestic miracle that separates the Fisher family from ordinary life.
2. In what ways does the amputation illustrate the theme of the body as commodity?
The surgeon’s press conference instantly pivots from loss to prosthetic possibility, turning the stump into a demonstration project for high‑tech limbs. The social worker’s language (“run, dance, even swim”) emphasizes the body’s marketable adaptability, while the later wrestling career demonstrates how even a damaged body can be re‑engineered for profit.
3. How do Hannah’s and Billy’s reactions to Gabriel’s wrestling career differ, and what do they reveal?
Hannah weeps at the match, seeing the spiritual distance between the Amish boy she raised and the branded giant on stage. Billy replays the video with amazed delight, then registers the obscene online speculation. Together they show the split between a familial, sacred understanding of the body and the consumer gaze that reduces it to spectacle.
4. What role does the epigraph play in shaping the thematic argument?
Dickinson’s poem declares that “Life, and Death, and Giants” are merely “Minor—Apparatus—Hopper of the Mill,” stripping grandeur of its aura and insisting that fame is random. The novel repeatedly tests this proposition: Gabriel’s body is indeed caught in the machinery of commerce, yet moments of sacred tenderness—the funeral, the fireflies—suggest that poetry’s reductionism is not the whole truth.
5. Why is the family’s refusal to sell Gabriel’s shoes significant for the theme?
The shoes, custom‑made for feet no factory could fit, encapsulate the body’s singularity. Refusing to turn them into a tourist trinket reclaims that singularity from the marketplace. The fossil‑bearing limestone that marks the grave extends the gesture, tying Gabriel’s body to deep, non‑commercial time rather than to a price tag.