Bad Summer People

“I’m not paying two million dollars for my beach house, plus fifty thousand in property taxes, for my son to find a corpse. Someone needs to pay for this.”

Appearing in the first scene of the story, this privileged statement sets the tone of entitlement and self-absorption that characterizes all the wealthy summer residents of Fire Island, and it also establishes the element of dark humor that runs through all the superficial interactions that characterize the group, for just like little Danny Leavit’s father, the main characters also exhibit signs of willful entitlement that prevent them from perceiving a more objective view of reality. Their selfishness thus ultimately becomes their undoing as the events of the novel unfold.

“The thought that all her mom friends would be spending the summer together without her made her anxious and jealous, and she hated that Jason needled her about it. ‘You need to stop doing things just because everyone else is,’ he’d say, after she’d insist on going to a certain vacation spot in St. Barts, or hiring the most sought-after tutor, or joining the golf club in Westchester that half of Braeburn belonged to. It’s not like Jason was some renegade […] Where did he get off telling her she was a sheep?”

This passage suggests that Lauren is easily led and easily bullied, for despite her lofty social status, she demonstrates an inability to set boundaries with others and is often swayed by superficial social interactions. The passage also shows Jason’s hypocrisy, for although he criticizes Lauren’s conventionality, it is clear that he himself only wants a house on Fire Island because he associates it with Sam’s wealth and with his own ongoing affair with Jen.

“Robert had thought that maybe they’d get married. He’d known it was a silly idea—they were only twenty-one. But he loved being with her, and more importantly, he loved her life.”

This passage sums up Robert Heyworth’s character succinctly and accurately, for although he did once have genuine feelings for Julie, those feelings were inextricably linked to his desire for her money. Yet in a sharp contrast to this inner desire, Robert also wants to be his own man rather than being financially supported by a wife.