Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Stargirl, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Individuality and Conformity
Human Nature
Seeing, Visibility, and Invisibility
Friendship, Love, and Social Pressure
Summary
Analysis
Two days later, Leo doesn’t see Stargirl at school until after lunch. But after lunch, he hears a laughing voice asking, “What do you have to do to get somebody’s attention around here?” When he looks, he sees a girl in jeans, sandals, makeup, and hoop earrings. When Leo incredulously asks, “Stargirl?” she replies that her name is Susan.
Ironically, Stargirl/Susan’s newly conventional appearance makes her even less noticeable than she already was as a shunned figure at school, showing the stifling effects of conformity.
Themes
Stargirl’s sunflower bag, ukulele, and pet rat are gone. Leo thinks she looks “magnificently, wonderfully, gloriously ordinary”—just like any other girl at Mica High. He even grabs her right in the middle of the crowd of students, not caring who sees. He feels proud.
Leo and Stargirl/Susan start holding hands all the time and sitting together at lunch. Leo even “struts,” proud to be associated with her, even saying “Susan” over and over to himself. They start going on conventional dates to the movies and Cinnabon instead of following strangers around and leaving gifts for people. Susan develops a passion for designer clothes and jewelry.
Leo and Stargirl begin to look like a typical high school couple. Leo relishes this. He’s always preferred to be in the background, and having a conventional girlfriend allows him to hide in a different way. “Susan,” meanwhile, studies how to fit in with everyone else.
Themes
Susan asks Leo constant questions about how ordinary kids act and think. She goes so far as to invent a fictional “ordinary person” named Evelyn Everybody, asking Leo things like, “Would Evelyn like this? Would Evelyn do that?” She even cuts back on laughing so that she can be a sullen teenager. Yet no matter what Susan does to appear “normal,” it doesn’t work. The rest of the kids still shun her.
Susan tries to master the skill of conformity, but it isn’t enough for her peers. For one thing, it’s just another costume on Susan; it doesn’t go more than skin-deep. And anyway, it doesn’t change what the rest of the school hates about her—her stubborn sympathy for enemies.
Themes
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Realizing that nobody likes her, Susan cries for herself—something Leo hasn’t seen her do before. At her house, he notices that her “happy wagon” contains just two stones. The next day at school, he finds Susan sitting on the courtyard bench, holding a scratching stick and wearing a sign that reads, “TALK TO ME AND I’LL SCRATCH YOUR BACK.” She doesn’t get any takers, and Leo walks away before he gets too close.
Though she’s so focused on others, Susan does not lack a capacity to feel pain for herself—she’s “normal” in certain ways, too. She’s even desperate for attention, now that her eyes have been open to the fact that she lacks others’ regard.
Themes
The next day, Susan runs up to Leo with bright eyes, saying it’s going to be okay—she knows because she had a vision. She explains that, while sitting in her enchanted place in the desert, she saw herself returning from the state oratorical contest in triumph. She wins first place and is greeted by all of Mica High giving her a hero’s welcome. “I’m going to be popular!” she joyfully declares. The more Leo listens to Susan practicing her speech, the more he begins to believe her vision, too.
Susan’s vision is modeled on the triumphant homecoming of last year’s oratorical champion. She believes that her own victory will somehow reverse her peers’ stance on her and win acceptance for herself at last—a shortcut to belonging.
Themes
