In the last chapter of Sag Harbor we see Benji start a new plan of self reinvention that echoes his at the beginning of the book. Once again it involves shoes---this time the combat boots. Seeing Benji restart the cycle rather than reach a conclusion to the original plan underscores the transient attitude taken towards identity and "self" from the previous chapter.
When Benji says "people called me Benji but that didn't mean I wasn't Ben" it's obvious that once again the new "Ben" he's describing, the one with a quota of girls to make out with per semester, is not the Ben narrating the book. He's just another temporary self.
But this attitude toward self has weird implications on the book's place in the coming-of-age genre. I was expecting the story of Benji becoming (or starting on the path to becoming) Ben, the mature narrator. Yet even by the story's end Ben seems very far removed from his 15-year-old self. So Ben's not the "destination" in this coming-of-age. What is? Can there even be one? Isn't the very idea of a character reaching maturity, coming into completeness as an adult sort of in complete opposition to the view of each self as separate from the previous self and, furthermore, a mere outward projection not necessarily any closer to a true internal nature?
Now, we do see Benji change in some ways, but they largely seem to be the result of him entering new stage of his life wherein he'll be too old to come out to Sag anymore, and not necessarily even in the direction of narrator Ben. And in the last chapter, the references to the cyclical nature of the people of Sag come at us in full force (he keeps talking about this kid he sees as the new Benji and wondering about his predecessor) so it seems like these changes are inevitable and not lasting. They're just who he'll be as someone too old to come out, before he's someone who comes out again with kids, before he's the old guy who only comes out of the bedroom once a day. Again, the transient self. Does the idea that Benji is just following this predictable track cheapen the coming-of-age we've just seen? Does it make it insignificant?
And yet, Ben as removed as Ben implies he is from Benji, he gives us the physical proof that they are one in the same. The BB in his eye says "no, Benji is progressing toward being Ben". It's proof that our selves do not each live entirely each in their own vacuum.
