Benji's Struggle with Identity
Throughout the book, it seems as though Benji struggles to find his identity in various ways. From fitting into his race, fitting within his friend group, and finding who he is a part of his brother, Benji experiences various factors that challenge and attempt to shape his identity and throughout the book, we see him struggling to determine his true identity.
One instance where we see him struggle with his identity is when rather than trying to create and find his own unique identity, Benji aims to copy others instead. He mentions how he took notes while observing others so that he can adopt them as his own. For instance, he would make sure to keep up with the terms and language that his friends used in order to fit in. It seems as though Benji settles for imitating others, most likely because it will ensure that he will fit in, rather than trying to work through his own identity.
Another instance where we see Benji struggling to figure out his identity is his relationship with Reggie. At the beginning of the book, Benji expresses how he yearns to be independent of Reggie, even wanting to change his name to no longer be associated as a pair. However, later Benji starts showing how he still wants to be Reggie's "partner in crime", getting jealous when he observes Reggie spending more time with Bobby. I believe Benji wants to still be their support for each other, but at the same time be able to find an identity of their own. He struggles to find the balance between the two.
Not only does he struggle with finding his identity, but Benji also seems to feel as though he must deal with his problems alone. He mentions throughout the book that his family never talks about emotions or problems within their family. The normal method is ignoring their problems and dealing with them all on their own. This most likely makes Benji believe he can't talk to anyone about it, even though having advice from someone could have significantly helped Benji realize the importance of determining his own identity in the beginning.
With your blog post, I see a lot of similarities between Jason and Benji. Especially when Benji is trying to fit in with his friend group and is copying their mannerisms/language, we see the same thing with Jason when he tries to fit in with the other boys in order to be cool/not bullied and he even calls Dean "Moron" at the beginning to fit in. We also see this same struggle to share struggles with others as both characters really try to deal with their hardships on their own. I think this is really interesting because it raises the question of whether coming-of-age is always like this growth from wanting to fit in/be like others to being your own identity as we've seen this same coming-of-age trope in most of our books. Personally, and I think other people would also agree that coming-of-age is much more broad than this common depiction but I think its interesting to note that a lot of books do use this same struggle and growth for their characters.
ReplyDeleteYou bring up some great points and I definitely agree with you that Benji has a very difficult time finding out who he truly is because he's too obsessed with fitting in. Taking this idea a bit further, I think it can relate to the "made for TV family" thing where Benji is just so focused on creating this outward image of himself that he can't focus on who he truly is. At the end of the book though we see improvement as Benji learns that he'll still be himself (Ben) no matter what other people see or think of him.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea you brought up of how Benji just keeps imitating others when trying to supposedly "reinvent" himself. In that situation, he's definitely trying to adopt mannerisms just because he wants to fit in, but we actually see him doing the same in ways I wouldn't typically think of as trying to fit in. For instance, his phrase "that's so uncool" - it's not really his, he just picked it up from "stoners" and is imitating them. However, I think what's crucial there, is that he's "imitating" it because he wants to, in a situation with other people who don't necessarily think that "that's so uncool" is a cool thing to say. Everyone picks things up from others, and I think that everyone's "identity" is really just bits and pieces of others around them, all pushed together to make a unique person. Benji just has pick things up that he genuinely feels like fit him, rather than pick things up just because others think it's cool.
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