The Fragility of Summer Friendships in Sag Harbor
Throughout Colson Whitehead’s Sag Harbor, the narrator Ben ominously teases the less than fortunate fates of his friends from his childhood, hinting at the fact that he and his friends from Sag Harbor don't speak much anymore, and that somewhere in the midst of each of their coming-of-ages, they diverged from each other’s paths. This seems almost hard to believe in the context of the other Sag Harbor-born friendships, those who have lasted generations and laid the foundations for the entire community. To the adults in Sag Harbor, the friendships they made during the summers of their childhood formed a strong enough bond to last a lifetime, picking up each time they see each other like no time has passed at all. So what happened to Benji and his friends? How did they get so disconnected from one another?
The hints at the lack of substance in Benji’s friend group is there from the beginning of the novel. What looks on the surface like teasing and harmless pranks is revealed as a much more problematic dynamic at the end of the chapter titled “The Gangsters.” Benji and his friends choose to have a BB gun fight, but Benji, feeling apprehensive about the safety of the BB gun fight and not trusting his friends’ responsibility with the BB guns, proposes some rules and safety measures to ensure no one gets hurt. None of Benji’s friends care to listen to his proposals for safety measures, though, as they feel like taking precautions makes them seem less tough. When Benji takes out his safety goggles on the day of the BB gun fight, Marcus replies “I’m not wearing any pussy-ass goggles,” despite having agreed to the idea a few days before (Whitehead 183). When the group makes the rule that Randy can’t pump his gun more than twice, because the shots hurt too much, he doesn’t end up taking it seriously. At the end of the chapter, Randy ends up shooting Benji in the eye, hard enough that it was clear he pumped it more than twice, since it easily broke the skin. Benji and Reggie are adamant that Benji needs to go to the hospital because his eye could get infected, but none of his friends, even the ones with access to cars, offer to help him, because they’re too afraid of getting in trouble. Benji justifies the ways he and his friends treat each other with the excuse that they do care for each other, but the way they show that care is through insults, but when Benji is really in need of help, none of his friends are there for him.
Though Benji tries to rationalize the way that he and his friends treat each other, it’s clear that there isn’t much genuine care or friendship underneath the jokes and insults. This is exposed again before the U.T.F.O concert. Before the concert, when N.P. is sure that he has a way to get himself, Marcus, and the cousins into the concert, he bluntly tells Benji that he might have to sit this one out, and that there was nothing N.P. could do about it. Once the bouncer tells them that maybe the boys could get in, but there’s no way he’s letting the cousins in because they look too young, N.P. quickly changes his mind, choosing to see the concert with Benji. He tells the cousins that they’ll have to leave without him, as Ben puts it, “like a soldier explaining the facts of war” (Whitehead 259). While this might not seem like a big deal––and it wouldn't be if it was a one time thing––but we see that this decision ends up costing N.P. and Bobby their relationships, with the girls being so mad at being ditched that they break up with the boys. Seeing this trend, it’s not hard to imagine that a similar thing could have happened with Benji’s entire friend group. With everybody only focused on what is best for themselves, and showing little to no care for each other, Benji’s friend group is fragile and superficial, and it’s not surprising that these friendships didn’t last.
