Sag, Family Drama, and Trains

I have enjoyed Sag Harbor. However, I’m not sure whether to indicate Sag Harbor as a coming of age novel. Everyone agrees that Benji has gained a much more clearer sense of identity. He starts the summer with this fight of finding his place in the world, and he gets *somewhere* closer to that my the end of the summer. The reason I say somewhere is because unlike the rest of the novels which we have read this semester, Benji goes through the least growth. Even towards the end of the novel, when Benji is contemplating his look for the first day of school after school, and what he will do during the school year, the things he say seem pretty immature, and not much of a change from his thinking at the start of the novel. And let’s not forget that it is also true that not much happens in terms of plot development, because the novel focuses a lot on describing Sag Harbor and the culture around it, as well as how that impacts Benji. Then again, that’s what keeps the book down to Earth and close to reality. And I think that’s why I liked this book. This book depicts a real-life example of a teenage kid’s story. And as a teenager, when I read this, there are many aspects of the novel which I can immediately connect to, even though it takes place in a completely different time period. In short, while I wouldn’t classify Sag as a coming of age novel, I would certainly describe it as a fun and truthful read.

Now I also wanna talk about something a little more minute. Recently, somebody in class talked about the similarities in the dynamics of two sibling “rivalries”, and I just want to comment a little bit on that. The first is sisters Ruth and Lucille from Housekeeping, and the second is brothers Benji and Reggie from Sag Harbour. In both, we see a sibling dynamic which starts out great but then diverges into something else.  Ruth and Lucille are separated due to their split choices of path. The separation is forced, because Lucille takes the structured path of society, while Ruth chooses the wandering path of nature. Contrary to this, Benji and Reggie’s separation is much more of a mutual understanding. They both spend their summers apart from each other, listen to different music, go to different school, and even work at different places. Ruth and Lucille’s relationship ends to a point at which they don’t even think about each other. Benji and Reggie understand that they are different human beings, and they have separate identities. I think this is a good place for a typical Shaleen-style metaphor: Ruth and Lucille catch the same train. Lucille’s goes forward, Ruth’s goes in reverse. Bengi and Reggie hug, say goodbye to each other, and hop on to different trains going to different locations. Sorry for the corny metaphor, but that’s how I see it (and that’s what’s important :D).
Saturday, May 16th