Throughout the book, Benji was basically shown as the only one who was brave/upstanding enough to do the right thing from the beginning and walk away from Kevin. Many times, he silently/privately took Maya’s side … but I just don’t understand why he never vocally/publicly took her side?
Like, I get that he wasn’t a real witness b/c he didn’t see it happen, so he couldn’t exactly testify or anything. But I still feel like he could and should have spoken up in Maya’s defence when the whole town was aggressively saying she’s lying. I get that Benji’s not really the most loquacious person and he prefers to make points with his actions … But he does use his words when necessary (eg. when he stood up and gave that big team pep talk after Kevin got pulled off the bus) and in this case I feel like it was necessary. There were practically no voices pushing back on the popular narrative that Kevin was the victim and Maya was the wh\*re/liar. Even if Benji pushing back wouldn’t have changed the overwhelming town opinion, I think it could have made some people stop and think (Benji generally commands respect from others, plus he’s Kevin’s best friend, so it would be pretty surprising/a big deal for him to say he believes Maya) and it could have given courage to the other ppl who believed Maya but were staying quiet. Besides that, it probably would have meant a lot to Maya and her family, and it’s just kind of the right thing to do.
So I’m just not really sure what Benji’s motivations were for staying so quiet about his support for Maya the whole time? Given his character, it doesn’t seem like it could have been out of cowardice or a lack of integrity or anything…
Thoughts?
\*NOTE: I have not read the Winners yet, so pls be especially careful of spoilers for that book
by harrietmwelsch910
1 Comment
Backman portrays Benji as a decent person, but he also portrays him as someone who has a ton of issues that he doesn’t cope with very well, one of which is the fact that his best friend and crush is a rapist. I don’t think we were meant to interpret Benji’s behavior as the gold standard for what to do when your friend rapes someone, so much as we were meant to sympathize with his struggle to move on in the aftermath.
As for his reasons not to say something, there are a ton, but I think a big part is that realizing what Kevin did was such a shock to his system that he genuinely did not know how to handle it. He’s built his entire foundation on being Kevin’s friend, and on loving Kevin, and when that crumbles he’s kind of set adrift with no clear course of action or sense of who he is now. It’s imperfect but it makes a lot of sense for his character, I think.