Benji Cooper
Benji is the 15-year-old African-American student attending a mostly white private school in New York who narrates the novel. It through his eyes—informed by the recent acquisition of the knowledge of W.E.B. DuBois’ concept of the double-consciousness through black Americans must view the world—that the reader looks at his summer spent with friends and his younger brother at a beach house mostly unattended by adult supervision.
Reggie Cooper
Benji’s 14-year-old brother who gets a summer job at Burger King while Benji works an ice cream stand gig. Their father’s drunken binges have been the stimulus for the two boys to seek an escape from the brooding atmosphere increasingly pervading their home and Reggie often takes the brunt of dad’s disparagement of his family which, in turn, is the result of a lifetime dealing with racism that even business success can't reverse.
Elena Cooper
The Cooper brothers have an older sister, 18-year-old Elena. Although not a major participant in the action of the narrative, Elena’s absence infuses the novel’s theme of Sag Harbor a place of escape. She, too, has managed to find a way out of the inhospitable house back home by finding a summer job. The fact that all three children are seeking escape from an oppressive atmosphere within a “Cosby Show” type of upper class affluent lifestyle contributes to the utility of Benji’s dawning awareness of the double consciousness doctrine of DuBois.
Dr. Cooper
The father of the three teens is a podiatrist whose weekends binges of drinking and taking out his frustrations on his kids is the representation of that forced dual consciousness. He has managed to climb out of a world much tougher and more dangerous than the one he’s managed to provide for his children, but an education in an exclusive white prep school has also had the effect of keeping his kids ignorant of many aspects of African-American culture. This generational divide is portrayed in a powerful scene in which Benji and Roger are confronted by vicious Dobermans in a part of town where some white homeowners still keep blackfaced lawn jockeys in the front yard. The lack of recognition of this symbol of racism by his children is part of what eats at Dr. Cooper and what drives Benji to begin taking notice of things during the summer that might have passed by before.
