The BB Gun Incident
While doing the reading and discussing Sag Harbor, I decided to do some digging about Colson Whitehead’s BB Gun experiences in real life. This book seems partly autobiographical, partly anthropological, and partly reflective. I wondered if this was a real incident because it seemed cool but I assumed that when I got my answer it would be simple yes or no with something else on the end about how he was a silly young kid, more about the incident, or about how he came up with the idea if it wasn’t real.
However, in proper Colsen Whitehead fashion, his answer was pensive, reflective, and thoughtful. When asked by the New Yorker about the BB Gun Incident and weather or not he had the bullet in his eye he replied “Don’t We All?” I found it really interesting that he responded like this and also indicative of the rest of the book. The BB Gun Incident, while small, isn’t super important to who he is at least from the surface. However, upon further reflection, you can begin to see what he means by this and how it impacts him. It informs his views on violence, guns, and sort of changes how he views his friends and peers. While much of this book can be summed up as just a fun summer the author had, many of the incidents that happened shaped who Colsen became.
I think the way he makes it seem like we all have something like this is also this important and fundemental. In addition, he doesn’t know if he has blood poisoning. I think that this is an interesting parallel between how he reflects on his life. This is something from his childhood and youth and he doesn’t know how it’s affected him. In addition, he knows that it is too late if it has. When Whitehead talks about how we all have something like this, I think he means something that happened to us, changed us in some way and is sort of natural or ambiguous in how it’s affected us.
If you’d like to read the full interview please go to this link:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-blog/fiction-q-a-colson-whitehead
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I really like the idea that we "all" have a BB in our eye, in some form or another, and I thank you for sharing that line with the class. The interview you link is connected to the original publication of this story, which I read in the print _New Yorker_ at the time--but I didn't see the online interview supplement. He really is cagey about what in the novel is based in fact and what is not (in the acknowledgments he thanks his boss at the ice-cream place, clearly the basis for Martine, and calls him a "great boss"--not clear whether he ever patted Colson on the head), but he does say that the BB episode is "too stupid to leave out." Whether there's actually a BB lodged in his eye remains unclear--but as a metaphor, there's no doubt. Adolescence and childhood scars us all in many ways, but scars are signs of survival and persistence, and they indeed become a part of us.
ReplyDeleteThis is really interesting! The BB gun incident symbolized literally carrying your past with you, and I think most of us have some sort of scar/something similar that we can share a similar story about. Regardless of whether or not he actually has a BB lodged in his eye, I thought the BB gun scene was important to include because it served as a metaphor for growing up and learning to deal with things on your own.
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