Was this Benji's last summer coming out?
As introduced in the beginning of the book, Sag Harbor is predominantly a vacation community, which is pretty much only populated during summer. Due to Benji and Reggie’s private school schedules, they get out of school a few days earlier than any of the other kids. Benji describes how empty the town is when they first arrive, and he introduces the concept in their community of “coming out”. In this case, the term is used to describe familiar families coming out to their vacation homes for the summer. This arrangement forms a tight knit community in which people, who are normally minorities as upper middle-class African-Americans back in New York create a kind of utopia for the summer. The community in Sag Harbor almost feels stagnant, frozen in time; filled with the same elders telling Benji stories about his grandparents, and acting simply as a backdrop to his own development. One especially interesting effect that the phenomenon of coming out has is how one can only see little slices of everyone’s life, with no context for what happened during the rest of the year. This makes it especially mysterious when a member of the community stops coming out for the summer. Benji talks about scouting around the neighborhood at the start of the book, looking for who’s here this year, describing the abandoned “haunted houses” of the people who came every summer before suddenly stopping.
Throughout the entire book, Benji talks about his older sister: Elena, who stopped coming to Sag, the summer after moving out to college. This creates a lot of tension between her and Benji’s parents, leading to her barely even visiting for holidays anymore. In the second to last chapter of the book, Benji runs into Elena for the first time that year. She’s happy to see him, but is clear about making sure their parents don’t know she was there and didn’t want to visit. As she has to go, Elena says one thing that sticks with Benji especially:
“Just do me a favor, Benji, and get out when you can,” she said. “Work hard and get into a good school. That way you’re out of the house and that’s it.” It’s kind of weird, because for Benji’s entire childhood, it’s like he is aware of his parents’ somewhat abusive relationship, closing all the windows whenever they are arguing. But simultaneously, he also seems oblivious to the fact that any of his parents’ abusive tendencies may not be normal. Benji acknowledges how his father targets his brother, and how Reggie lines up all of his Burger King shifts, just to avoid their parents. However, even with all this evidence, Benji is surprised by Elena’s suggestion to get out.
I think that it becomes clear that the narrator, Ben, took his sister's advice. He’s obviously well educated, given the way he writes, leading us to believe that he did in fact go to a good school. He also looks back on his past self: Benji with a kind of disgust and unfamiliarity. Much of the reasoning for this could just be from his evolving personality, style, or education, as he does comment on, but I think that Ben might be embarrassed about oblivious he was of the true nature of his family during those years. I think that Ben maybe feels bad about just standing by as Reggie and their father’s relationship worsened, and became abusive. Many of these events in the book are clear foreshadowings towards Ben’s eventual escape from his parents, and the tradition of Sag Harbor. The way Colson Whitehead wrote about the Labor Day party in the last chapter really gave me the feeling that it was Benji’s last. All of this really does make me wonder though, what was the breaking point that caused Benji to realize? I also wonder what his relationship with Reggie would be now.
-Sahnan
Hi Sahnan, I loved this blog post. You did a really good job piecing together the evidence from Benji's story with Ben's narration to figure out some of Ben's decisions after the story ends. I like how Elena doesn't appear in the book too much, she holds such a unique role in how Benji develops.
ReplyDeleteHi Sahnan! I think this was a really thoughtful blog post that explained the idea of “coming out” in a really clear way. I also liked how you connected Elena’s advice to Benji’s personal growth and eventual distance from Sag Harbor. It made me think more about how people outgrow places that once felt like home. Nice post!
ReplyDeleteHi Sahnan!! I agree in that Elena was sort of a foreshadowing in Benji, now Ben's, story. I feel like that situation in particular is quite relatable to most readers as well; I feel like we can all recall a moment in time where we've been told seemingly confusing advice that makes so much sense in retrospect. I agree that Ben's disgust for his past self may stem from this idea. What's now so obvious to him is embarrassing to admit was once not the case. Great post!!
ReplyDeleteHi Sahnan, it's certainly interesting to think that Elena was prior proof that Benji would stop coming out. Not coming out was only a matter of time for Ben: most older children, when they reach around 16, stop coming out altogether since it is seen as "childish". Ben's disgust for this younger self is interesting--I'd never through of this before. Do you think a Ben who escaped from his parents still feels nostalgia for everything? When Ben becomes even older, do you think he will still feel the same?
ReplyDeleteHi Sahnan, I really liked how you explored the theme of “getting out” and how Elena’s advice shaped Ben’s eventual path away from Sag Harbor. You tied together Ben’s memories, his evolving self-awareness, and the symbolic weight of the Labor Day party beautifully. Great post!
ReplyDeleteI really like your use of Elena as evidence for your analysis. It feels like she walked a path for Benji to follow with her advice for him to leave the family because of the conditions. It's similar to "standing on the shoulders of giants," where Benji is carving his own path in a tunnel dug out by a predecessor.
ReplyDeleteI agree that there's an almost elegiac tone to the final chapter. Even though Benji is making plans for "next summer" (anticipating who gets the bed by the window), it sure *feels* like he can see himself "outgrowing" the Sag Harbor scene. Symbolically, he and his "crew" are now in the roles of standing on the sidelines of the big foot race, smirking and making wisecracks--and most of his crew have already gone back to New York at this point. He is no longer running the race, and he no longer cares who wins. He contemplates which of the older men represents HIS older self, but he can't identify him. He can't really picture himself as an older guy still lingering around Sag, and indeed, no one from Elena's era can be found. Somehow it's even more poignant and sad as an ending, that Benji doesn't even know it's his final summer.
ReplyDeleteWe only get brief glimpses of the older Ben in the novel, but he does mention that he has traveled out to Sag to do research for the book, to "check his memory" and get the details right. This implies that he has not been coming "out" regularly, and we don't imagine that he still has access to the family home.