Guys, did Benji come-of-age?

 It’s possible that this is the hottest of hot takes I will ever produce in this class, but throughout my reading of Sag Harbor, I feel like I haven’t actually seen much of Benji’s actual coming-of-age. Sure, he’s experienced plenty of quintessential coming-of-age moments: having a first kiss, drinking beer, sneaking out of houses, navigating friendships, etc. etc., but has he come out of the end of the summer actually having “grown up” any more? For me, I don’t really think so. 

I’ll be the first to admit that my reading of Sag Harbor wasn’t nearly as dedicated as some of the other books we read; when I read Fun Home, I considered it the best book I had read in years, and I was always equal parts excited to read about Jason Taylor and also full of dread (man does that little teenager have an insane amount of misfortune). So, in a way that’s inherent to this big of a change of pace, I found myself less enraptured by this last novel. 

Even so, I think that the contrast between Benji, our little protagonist, and Ben, our adult narrator, as different personalities, and in a sense, different characters, can be compelling. It’s reminiscent to the presence of Jason’s mental alter egos adding intrigue. However, the fact that this is a coming-of-age novel seems to imply that at some point, we’ll actually see Benji grow as a person, into something more like the Ben that we see narrating Benji’s story. But we don’t get that closure. At the very last chapter, Benji ruminates on the kind of man Benji will become. “...Who was I replacing? According to this scheme, he had to be here on this street, chowing down on some of Mr. Baxter’s pork ribs. Was he one of Those Who Didn’t Come Out Anymore?” (Whitehead 316). And indeed, Ben is here, narrating Benji’s rumination, as this book is his own little autobiographical self-reflection. Reflection-ception, if you will. But where is Ben’s interjected opinion? What does Ben offer, what does he suggest about how this summer shaped Benji into the man he now is? What does he have to say about how much Benji— “that boy”, his own younger self— grew this summer? Painfully, he does not offer us anything. After reading this book, I honestly don’t see what Benji has learned about the person he wants to be, from this summer at Sag Harbor. At least, anything more than that he wants to be an entirely new, combat boots-wearing, girl-kissing guy that’s actually going to be cool, which isn’t too far from what he wanted to be at the beginning of the book either. 

Maybe it’s just me, and my pet peeve for loose threads. But to me, the lack of a journey from Benji to Ben is just unsatisfying. However, I am willing to concede that Ben’s (and essentially, Colson Whitehead’s) third-person study of Benji and his friends, his descriptions of the setting of Sag Harbor, and the depiction of the experience of being just 15 for the first time and bemoaning how not-grown-up he was —that is all very good. This blog is by no means a dig at Colson Whitehead, or at Mr. Mitchell, and any other readers who really enjoyed Sag Harbor, so I’d like to issue a formal apology and say I’m so sorry my ending blog for the year is kind of negative! I just… wasn’t the most enthused about it, and I was pretty disappointed by the lack of Benji’s actual reinvention. In any case though, I welcome any discourse in the comments about how I am wrong, and I remain flexible in my interpretation of this book. Maybe I’ll reread this book over the summer and prove myself completely wrong. In any case, thank you to everyone who has read my blog this semester, and I hope you have a very happy end-of-school-year, and a great summer!