Finding One's Identity

As much as this novel is a coming of age tale, it is also a search for one's identity tale. In this book, Benji is a young man who grows up in a privileged world that is predominately white. This causes Benji to be something of an oddity at school where most of his classmates are of a different race and therefore people with whom he feels he cannot identify. To add to this confusion, Benji's father is an angry man who blames the white man for everything bad in his life, often cursing these faceless people in front of his children. Benji's father often encourages his sons to lash out in violence against their white classmates when they feel as though they have been victims of prejudice, even when the offense was made out of misunderstanding or confusion.

At Sag Harbor, Benji is taken out...