Sag Harbor

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2009

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 7-8 Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 7 Summary: “Tonight We Improvise”

Content Warning: The Chapter 8 Summary of this section contains a scene of bullying.

Benji returns briefly to the city one weekend in August to get his braces taken off. He is eager to return to Sag Harbor for the last two weeks of summer. When he gets back to the beach, he discovers that Clive has left for basketball camp, Bobby has returned home, and a girl Melanie, who hasn’t seen the group in a number of years, has joined the friends. Benji is interested in Melanie, even though she is dating Nick. They chat, and Melanie reminds Benji of when they were five years old and she kissed him. She asks him what happened to change him from the happy boy she remembers. As they walk, Benji sees the old summer home that the Coopers used to stay at when he was a child.

Earlier, Benji had heard a song on the radio which had triggered powerful emotions, but not until he sees the house does he realize that his emotions were focused on his childhood memories in that house: “This was my old house where all the good things still lived even though he had moved on. Everything as it was. Even the boy, the one who always seemed happy. He had to be here. This was here he lived” (297). Benji and Melanie sneak in the house, and once inside, he is surrounded by memories of the past, reminding him of when he felt safe and happy. Benji and Melanie wander through the house to his old bedroom. He begins to kiss Melanie, but he can’t stop his memories of the past: “We were a family. This was the scene the song gifted to me” (303). As they are kissing, Benji hears a car drive up the driveway, and he realizes that the house has been rented and someone is about to enter the home. Benji and Melanie crawl out the window on to the roof where they can jump down. They run away as someone yells at them.

The next time Benji sees Melanie, he explains to her that his aunt had allowed an employee to use the house that weekend. Melanie says, “That’s ok,” and turns her attention back to Nick. The chapter ends when the adult Benji explains that, a few years later, the aunt would sell the beach house, which appalls Benji.

Chapter 8 Summary: “The Black National Anthem”

It is now the end of summer, Labor Day weekend, and the highlight of the weekend is the Sag Harbor Hills Labor Day Party. Parents visit friends for a drink at their houses, while the younger children line up to race each other in their various age groups, 5-7, 8-10, 11-12. Benji and Reggie are too old to race, so they watch. They see NP and Nick talking to a tall boy, Barry David. As they watch the race, Benji reflects on his age, seeing himself in the younger racers:

The generations replacing and replenishing each other. Every summer this shifting-over took place in small degrees as you moved closer to the person who was waiting for you to catch up and some younger version of yourself elbowed you out of the way (315).

Benji is fascinated by this recycling of generations, and he is curious to find both the younger and older “versions” of himself.

Benji notices that Barry David has taken the first-place medal from a young boy and is taunting the young kids by making the boy jump for it, saying, “You can run, but can you jump? Look at you. You can run, but can you jump?” (318). In the middle of teasing the boy, an older woman grabs his arm and tells him to stop immediately. Barry leaves in anger.

That night there is the annual bonfire set up by Mr. Nickerson. Once he gets it started, Mr. Nickerson leaves, telling the children to “[let] it die out” (321). Once he leaves, some of the children begin tossing twigs and branches into the fire. Barry David then gets everyone’s attention when he throws a large rope into the fire. He then drags a bench from a patio set into the fire—and then a second bench. Benji and Reggie leave the fire and drink a beer as they chat about heading back to the city.

Back at home, in bed, Benji continues to think about the upcoming school year. He makes plans to start wearing combat boots to school to show that he was now a different Benji. He also makes plans to make out with three girls a semester. Benji realizes that his plan to be “Ben” didn’t work out over the summer: “People called me Benji but that didn’t mean I wasn’t Ben. A lot had happened over the summer. It didn’t work out the way I had envisioned but you had to admit some stuff happened” (328). Benji remains optimistic for the future.

Chapters 7-8 Analysis

The final chapters emphasize the theme of family and generational identity. When Benji is trying to figure out why the song on the radio has triggered such powerful nostalgia, he realizes that it’s not the memory of kissing Melanie when he was five years old that sparked his feelings. He is seduced by the memory of his childhood, imagining his family as a “perfect family.”

At the Labor Day parade, Benji observes the participants and sees the cyclical nature of Sag Harbor. The young children remind him of his young self, and he wonders who will take his place. The adults remind him of his future self, and he wonders what kind of adult he will turn out to be. Of course, the point of view of the novel does come from an adult Benji who already knows how he will turn out, at least in the next twenty years or so.

The narrative rarely steps out of the 1980s, but it does so momentarily in the final chapter, as it shifts to the future, when the adult Benji explains why he has been taking the time to look back at this particular summer:

Talking about that summer all this time, sometimes I have to stop and say, I don’t know who this Benji kid is, either. Certainly he would not recognize the man he came to be. The poor sap. I need him to figure out how I got where I am, and he needs me to reassure him that despite all he knows and has seen and feels, there is more. I can listen to him. But of course he can’t hear a damn thing I say (318).

This duality of narration, the adult speaking through the child’s limited perspective, allows the adult to highlight both the absurdity of certain situations that summer while also incorporating a fondness of tone as the adult sympathizes with the anxieties and fears of the child—anxieties and fears that perhaps still are felt by the adult. While the novel’s perspective on the passage of time emphasizes the impermanence of mortality, there is still continuity, in that “Ben” and “Benji” are actually the same person, and Benji’s house and family in Sag Harbor remain relatively stable (despite moments of alcoholism). Though the uncle cannot enter his father’s house, he can see it and understand it in context.

In contrast to Benji’s relative stability is Barry David. He shows up at the end of summer without any seeming family or friend connection to any of the Azurest families. His bullying, brazen behavior is shocking to not only Benji but also one of the “great shrunken matriarchs of the community,” who grabs Barry and chastises him in front of everyone. She asks him, “Where are your parents?” (319). He flees, untethered to any family and unbound by any sense of rules or appropriate behavior. Barry is an outsider, and Benji, after watching for a while, seeks to distance himself from the scene. Instead, he contemplates his upcoming school year, when, again, he optimistically imagines his future transformation into cool, popular “Ben,” the ultimate insider. This optimistic prediction brings the story and the summer full circle, as it reminds the reader of where the story began, with Benji’s high hopes for his summer at Sag Harbor.