Benji, Ben, and the Firefly

During the chapter “The Gangsters” in Colson Whitehead’s Sag Harbor, there is a particularly interesting moment during the BB gun fight where Benji stops to reflect on a firefly that he encounters. Alone in the night, Benji says:

A firefly blinked into existence, drew half a word in the air. Then gone. A black bug secret in the night. Such a strange little guy. It materialized visible to human eyes for brief moments, and then it disappeared. But it got its name from its fake time, people time, when in fact most of its business went on when people couldn’t see it. Its true life was invisible to us but we called it firefly after its fractions. Knowable and fixed for a few seconds, sharing a short segment of its message before it continued on its real mission, unknowable in its true self and course, outside of reach. It was a bad name because it was incomplete一both parts were true, the bright and the dark, the one we could see and the other one we couldn’t. It was both. (184)


I found this passage especially compelling because it feels like a peaceful, reflective break between the darker and more intense moments of this chapter. Therefore, as it’s not a particularly essential section to move the main storyline forward, I thought that it must also hold some specific significance within a larger theme of this chapter. Although this paragraph may be interpreted in many ways, I found it interesting that it directly preceded Benji getting hit by Randy’s shot. This structure associated these two moments together for me as a reader. However, I couldn’t figure out the exact significance until later on.


At the very end of the chapter, the concluding paragraph stood out to me and I immediately connected it back to the firefly passage. Benji states:


It’s still there. Under the skin. It’s good for a story, something to shock people with after I’ve known them for years and feel a need to surprise them with the other boy. It’s not a scar that people notice even though it’s right there. I asked a doctor about it once, about blood poisoning over time. He shook his head. Then he shrugged. “It hasn’t killed you yet.” (191)


In both of these paragraphs, Benji makes a connection between something that’s visible to the world and something that is hidden, but both pieces being necessary to make the being a whole. In the first passage, he discusses the two parts of the firefly’s life: the part that is visible, and its “true self” that is invisible. In the second passage, he talks about how the BB gun and “the other boy” are hidden from the rest of the world, yet are still always inside of him and his outward appearance. Like the firefly, other people can only see Ben (the adult) in his “incomplete” form. What truly shaped him to be who he is and what formed his life’s “mission” (the course of his life) stays hidden in plain sight, like a firefly when it does not glow.


Through these parallels, Ben shows how these experiences during his youth in Sag Harbor were essential to the development of his adult self. The events from his childhood, although they may not have seemed to be life-changing then, turn out to have large consequences for his life in the future and continue to be a part of who he is. The BB, the accompanying experience from his youth, and this “other boy” are, quite literally, lodged inside of him permanently. They represent how his childhood years are formative for who he becomes, an essential part of his life’s narrative (thus explaining the greater significance and meaning of these stories and the novel, besides just being for entertainment).


However, there was another detail in the firefly paragraph that struck me as well. The discussion of the firefly’s name was particularly compelling. Ben, the narrator, comments how “we called it firefly after its fractions… it was a bad name because it was incomplete一both parts were true, the bright and the dark, the one we could see and the other one we couldn’t. It was both.” This discussion reminded me of Ben’s name itself. Benji created Ben and who he is as the narrator, yet Ben in the present is only known as “Ben.” This name and label is technically “incomplete,” therefore (and also a literal shortened/”incomplete” version of “Benji”). Ben’s adult name only calls him “after [his] fractions” even though all parts of his life are necessary and true, the visible that he displays to the world and the invisible, both crucial to defining who he is.


With the symbolic difference between “Ben” and “Benji,” youth and adulthood, the reader can feel that these are almost two entirely different and distinct characters. However, this novel brilliantly reminds us that even with this separation, each character’s story is not complete without the other. Benji not only evolved into Ben, but Ben needs Benji in order to be whole.


Sharing these two sides of life and the complexity of their names in common, Benji, Ben, and the firefly become connected. Through these scenes and in many others, Sag Harbor symbolically and powerfully illustrates the significance of childhood, of youth, and of the coming-of-age process, and how they are embedded into who we become in the future. And this can be universal, even if we don’t have something from that time stuck inside of us. When asked by The New Yorker if he actually has a BB near his eye, Coleson Whitehead simply responded, “don’t we all?”



Whitehead, Colson. Sag Harbor. Anchor Books, 2009. 

Quote from: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-blog/fiction-q-a-colson-whitehead

Comments

  1. MitchellMay 27, 2021 at 9:57 AM

    There's a lot that is great about this post, but I especially like the formulation "Benji not only evolved into Ben, but Ben needs Benji in order to be whole." It reminds me of the remarkable passage, that always makes me pause in my reading and get contemplative, in the final chapter, when Ben is narrating Benji's final(?) sideline appearance at the Labor Day foot races. He says that he can "see" Benji, in his memory, and there are all these things he would want to say to him, but of course Benji can't know Ben, and wouldn't be able to recognize himself if he were to "meet" him. And as Ben remarks, "He can't hear a word I say." They are connected in deep and undeniable ways, and the BB is just one reminder of this, but at the same time, due to the nature of memory, time, and experience, they can't really see or communicate with each other. I always imagine some kind of meeting between my younger "idiot" self and the guy writing these sentences here.

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