Sag Harbor

The title of the book Sag Harbor emphasizes the significance of setting in this novel. Contrast the two main locations, Sag Harbor and Manhattan, that Benji considers home and their effect on his identity.

The other integral aspect of the setting is the time period, the 1980s. The novel is strewn with extremely detailed references to 1980s entertainment, such as movies (Star Wars, Road Warrior, and Raiders of the Lost Ark), television (The Cosby Show, Good Times, MTV, CNN), music (rock, hip-hop, gangster rap, easy listening), and activities popular at the time (roller skating, Dungeons and Dragons). Research a pop culture allusion and explain its significance to Benji.

While Benji’s desire to fit in and to create a meaningful identity is at times poignant, the dominant tone is humor, as the adult Benji’s commentary on his youth is often full of comical descriptions of his past self. Explain how the author creates a tone that remains light-hearted and funny, despite covering “heavy” issues like family dysfunction and race relationships.

Benji and Reggie rarely see their parents, but when the parents do visit, the father’s voice dominates. Benji, often a passive character, fears his father’s volatile moods, especially when he drinks. Compare and contrast Benji and his father, in light of the tensions of the home.

Benji says that when he read W.E. Dubois in college, he was “blown away” (18). In particular, he was moved by the quote about double-consciousness:

And I quote: ‘It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self’ (18).  

In what ways does Benji suffer from double-consciousness? How does Dubois’s idea of double-consciousness dominate this text?

Benji’s father and Benji’s friends often talk about women in terms of their sexuality, referring crudely to women’s abilities to perform sexual acts. While the mother and Elena do not receive this same treatment, their voices are muted in the novel. Contrast the depictions of masculinity and femininity in this novel and explain its impact on the novel.

Benji makes several references to Star Wars. He specifically elaborates on a seemingly trivial detail when George Lucas, in rereleasing the film Star Wars, revised a scene to make the character Han Solo seem more like a hero (angering legions of die-hard fans in the process). In what ways is the adult Benji doing something similar in returning to the stories of his childhood to revise his understandings of the past?

The first-person narration of the novel plants the reader firmly in Benji’s limited point of view. How would this novel change if told from another point of view, whether from another family member’s point of view (such as the father, mother, Reggie, Elena) or another friend’s point of view (such as NP, Bobby, Randy, Clive, Marcus, or Nick)?