In Sag Harbor, one of Benji’s most formative moments during the summer is working at Jonni Waffle. Beyond simply making bank, this memory represents a myriad of “coming of age” moments for Benji that symbolize his transition to adulthood.
Simply having a job demonstrates how Benji is coming of age. When people think of growing up, one of the first major “signs” is working for money. With this job, Benji has a lot more newfound freedom. For one, he talks about having all the ice cream he wants and eating it for lunch. While it may seem immature that he is not properly loading his body with nutrients, the ability to choose what he eats is a sign of his growing adulthood. More specifically, it shows that he is currently in the transition phase of becoming an adult - while he has the maturity of a child when it comes to what he chooses to eat, he has the freedom of the adult.
There are also a variety of “emotional” experiences that signal a change in his mentality from childhood innocence to adult maturity. One of the more interesting ones is when he is working with a female coworker, and has these “experiences” where he talks about elbowing her in a certain place. He remarks, “One scoop dread, one scoop excitement - such was my portion when I worked with Meg” (Whitehead 118). I believe that this is one of the first documented times where he feels one of these more “adult” emotions and makes a notable remark about it.
During this summer in Sag Harbor, Benji is also without his brother, Reggie, for a large part of the time. This is noteworthy because throughout their entire childhood, Benji and Reggie were known as “the twins”, and did everything together. However, they’ve learned to get their own identities, and they hang with different crowds nowadays. Benji even remarks that their separation is even physically visible, having developed different physiques from their previously similar body types. This shift from being part of a duo to developing their own identities shows how Benji has become more of an adult this summer. Benji taking a job at Jonni Waffle is significant in this aspect because he chose to do a different job from Reggie, symbolizing their growing divide.
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ReplyDeleteGreat Blog Post. I think this is really interesting. Another thing about his time at Jonni Waffle was that he had to work in order to eat. There's something coming of age I suppose about that, being forced into the adult world like that.
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ReplyDeleteAwesome blog! I think this coming-of-age novel has many growing up implications as you suggest. However, I believe Benji was never able to "come of age" completely. I see this especially in how his future self bullies his past choices throughout the novel. Ultimately, Benji's experiences in the novel and at Jonni Waffle help him to begin his coming of age journey, but he has yet to complete it for a long time.
Hi! Great blog! I also wrote about the ice cream shop but didn't touch on that Benji and Reggie had separate jobs. They truly were going their own ways and you did a great job of capturing this.
ReplyDeleteHi Renee! Jonni Waffle definitely becomes more than a summer job for Benji. Along with giving him more freedom, emotional experiences, and an identity seperate from Reggie's, I would say that the job also taught him financial independence (work to live). Great blog post!
ReplyDeleteHi Renee! I agree getting a job is really the start of an coming-of-age journey. Jonni Waffle really did play a big factor in Benji's coming of age from the work aspect to the relationships he made at Jonni Waffle, it really taught him about work culture and also independence.
ReplyDeleteHi Renee! I really like the way you highlighted how his childlike maturity in his eating habits juxtaposes his newfound "adult"-like freedom. I hadn't previously considered the way that Benji's separated him from Reggie, but it makes perfect sense especially when you consider not only the time spent apart, but the friendships he made within that job. Great post!
ReplyDeleteHello Renee!
ReplyDeleteI usually would've thought eating ice cream for lunch would count as a sign of maturity, but yes, you bring up a great point of how the freedom of being able to choose ice cream as lunch indeed a sign of maturity and independence, similar to how unsupervised Benji and his gang is throughout Sag Harbor. And yes, this freedom also allows the two brothers to be separated and develop their own personalities alone. Very interesting stuff. Great Job!
Like so much in this book, when it comes to Jonni Waffle as a significant coming-of-age context, I'd say it's a little of both. Yes, there are real responsibilities associated with the job, and in addition to the fleeting thrills he experiences working with Meg, he also has some "deep" observations about "life on the other side of the glass"--his perch at the waffle-making stand gives him a critical perspective on humanity, and it's like people are revealing their dark inner selves when they stumble in desperate for ice cream. Benji starts to feel superior to these wealthy patrons, like he has a degree of power over them, and this too maybe has some c-o-a aspects, insights into the ways of the world.
ReplyDeleteBut at the same time, the stakes are quite low, he eats ice cream all day (a juvenile diet if there ever was one!), he's barely making anything approaching "bank," and he spends a lot of time at work playing mix tapes and goofing off with his friends. So it IS a significant milestone, a "real job," and it's also kind of NOT a real job.
I think one of the interesting aspects of Benji's time at Jonni Waffle is how the thought of the smell of ice cream makes him nauseated later in his life. Looking back on that time, he feels not fondness or nostalgia, but disgust. It shows how far Benji has come since his time at the ice cream shop, and how different the new Ben is from the Benji depicted in the book.
ReplyDeleteHi Renee!! I really enjoyed reading your blog post. I completely agree with you that the most "coming of age" moment for Benji is his job. From his job, he learns and experiences so many things that he can definitely learn from or apply in the future. I do really like how you pointed out how Benji and Reggie are mostly apart this summer. I really think that is also a really important thing in Benji's "coming of age" because he can learn to do things on his own. Good Job!!!
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