Stargirl opens with the story of Leo Borlock receiving a porcupine tie in the mail, in response to a newspaper article about his necktie collection. “At the time I simply considered the episode a mystery. It did not occur to me that I was being watched. We were all being watched,” he writes. This ominous-sounding statement actually refers to the harmless Stargirl, who keeps a close watch on people and events in Mica, Arizona, in order to cheer and support anyone who needs it. In time, Leo, who himself has a cameraman’s eye for his environment, learns about Stargirl’s way of seeing the world and witnesses its effects on those around her. By showing Stargirl through Leo’s eyes, and revealing Stargirl’s community through her eyes, Spinelli suggests that people’s experiences of the world around them are largely determined by what they choose both to see and not to see.
Leo is one example of a character who “sees,” though his observations are mostly limited to his natural environment, and his eyes are only beginning to be opened to other people. As a newcomer to Arizona, Leo had to cultivate an appreciation for the seeming monotony of the desert: “What you notice [in the Sonoran Desert] are the saguaros. To the newcomer from the East, it’s as simple as that. The desert seems to be a brown wasteland of dry, prickly scrub whose only purpose is to serve as a setting for the majestic saguaros. Then, little by little, the plants of the desert begin to identify themselves: the porcupiny yucca, the beaver tail and prickly pear and barrel cacti, buckhorn and staghorn and devil’s fingers, the tall, sky-reaching tendrils of the ocotillo.” Leo’s appreciation for the beauty of what seems at first to be a barren, unvarying wasteland anticipates his later appreciation for the uprising of individuality that blossoms across Mica High in Stargirl’s wake. Leo’s ability to notice the beauty of nature makes him more open to Stargirl’s beauty than many of his peers: “each night in bed I thought of [Stargirl] as the moon came through my window. I could have lowered my shade to make it darker and easier to sleep, but I never did. In that moonlit hour, I acquired a sense of the otherness of things.” Leo’s sensitivity to the “otherness of things”—something he’s cultivated through his enjoyment of the unshaded moonlight and the variety of the desert—prepares him to appreciate Stargirl’s “otherness,” too.
Stargirl sees even more than Leo does. She is especially aware of those who aren’t usually seen by others, and she transforms both her own and others’ lives accordingly. After Stargirl becomes a cheerleader, she cheers for anyone and everything—even an unpopular kid throwing away a piece of litter. The unprecedented experience of being noticed in this way is both mortifying and thrilling: “People who never even saw you before are smiling at you and slapping your back and pumping your hand, and suddenly it seems like the whole world is calling your name, and you’re feeling so good you pretty much just float on home from school.” Such recognition has both personal and broader social repercussions. For example, within the first few months of Stargirl’s arrival at Mica High, her kindness to those who are typically ignored transforms the whole environment there: “It was wonderful to see […] We were awash in tiny attentions. […] For years the strangers among us had passed sullenly in the hallways; now we looked, we nodded, we smiled. […] We discovered the color of each other’s eyes.” People who’ve barely looked at each other now notice and acknowledge one another’s presence. The joy of being recognized inspires kids to recognize others in turn, leading to a kinder, mutually supportive environment that contrasts sharply with the atomized, clique-driven, and lonely world it was before.
Stargirl’s ability to “see” extends to her awareness of the broader community. She regularly hunts through the “fillers” in the newspaper and monitors the 41 bulletin boards in town for clues to things others would overlook: “A filler doesn’t need to be ‘news.’ It doesn’t need to be important. It doesn’t even need to be read. All it’s asked to do is take up space. […] It might mention that so-and-so’s cat is missing. Or that so-and-so has a collection of antique marbles. ‘I search through fillers like a prospector digging for gold,’ she said.” Stargirl notices the people and events that are conventionally thought to “take up space,” and she sees them differently—as worthy of love, attention, and celebration.
In contrast, not being seen is socially devastating and can even become a self-fulfilling prophecy. At first, Stargirl seems oblivious when she’s booed or ridiculed for things like cheering for Mica High’s basketball opponents: “Then came the boos. She didn’t seem to notice. She did not seem to notice. Of all the unusual features of Stargirl, this struck me as the most remarkable.” Stargirl is so focused on seeing the happiness and pain of others that she’s unaware when the hostile gaze of her peers is directed at her. Eventually, though, Leo—who’s much more attuned to Mica High’s social order—points out to Stargirl that she’s being shunned (intentionally not seen) by the student body. Though this doesn’t deter her from continuing to show kindness to others and even winning the state oratory contest with a characteristically quirky speech, she is heartbroken when her peers virtually ignore her historic victory, realizing once and for all that she’s not accepted by them. She disappears from Mica High not too long after—the shunning becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. In other words, Stargirl’s peers treat her like she’s invisible, so she takes that cue to slip out of sight for real.
As his romance with Stargirl blossoms, Leo marvels that Stargirl “was bendable light: she shone around every corner of my day. […] She saw things. I had not known there was so much to see. She was forever tugging my arm and saying, ‘Look!’” Stargirl isn’t just an observer of her world, but the “light” by which other people see things. This is her biggest legacy in the book: a light that lingers even after she has disappeared from the story herself.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Seeing, Visibility, and Invisibility ThemeTracker
Seeing, Visibility, and Invisibility Quotes in Stargirl
And each night in bed I thought of her as the moon came through my window. I could have lowered my shade to make it darker and easier to sleep, but I never did. In that moonlit hour, I acquired a sense of the otherness of things. I liked the feeling the moonlight gave me, as if it wasn’t the opposite of day, but its underside, its private side, when the fabulous purred on my snow-white sheet like some dark cat come in from the desert.
It was during one of these nightmoon times that it came to me that Hillari Kimble was wrong. Stargirl was real.
We talked until dark. We said “adiós” to Señor Saguaro. On our way out, Archie said, more to me than to Kevin, I thought: “You’ll know her more by your questions than by her answers. Keep looking at her long enough. One day you might see someone you know.”
In the Sonoran Desert there are ponds. You could be standing in the middle of one and not know it, because the ponds are usually dry. Nor would you know that inches below your feet, frogs are sleeping, their heartbeats down to once or twice per minute. They lie dormant and waiting, these mud frogs, for without water their lives are incomplete, they are not fully themselves. For many months they sleep like this within the earth. And then the rain comes. And a hundred pairs of eyes pop out of the mud, and at night a hundred voices call across the moonlit water.
It was wonderful to see, wonderful to be in the middle of: we mud frogs awakening all around. We were awash in tiny attentions. Small gestures, words, empathies thought to be extinct came to life.
You never knew when it would happen. Maybe you were a little ninth-grade nobody named Eddie. As you’re walking down the hall you see a candy wrapper on the floor. You pick it up and throw it in the nearest trash can— and suddenly there she is in front of you, pumping her arms, her honey hair and freckles flying, swallowing you whole with those enormous eyes, belting out a cheer she’s making up on the spot […] People who never even saw you before are smiling at you and slapping your back and pumping your hand, and suddenly it seems like the whole world is calling your name, and you’re feeling so good you pretty much just float on home from school.
Then came the boos. She didn’t seem to notice.
She did not seem to notice.
Of all the unusual features of Stargirl, this struck me as the most remarkable. Bad things did not stick to her. Correction: her bad things did not stick to her. Our bad things stuck very much to her. If we were hurt, if we were unhappy or otherwise victimized by life, she seemed to know about it, and to care, as soon as we did.
To the person who expects every desert to be barren sand dunes, the Sonoran must come as a surprise. Not only are there no dunes, there’s no sand. […]
What you notice are the saguaros. To the newcomer from the East, it’s as simple as that. The desert seems to be a brown wasteland of dry, prickly scrub whose only purpose is to serve as a setting for the majestic saguaros. Then, little by little, the plants of the desert begin to identify themselves: the porcupiny yucca, the beaver tail and prickly pear and barrel cacti, buckhorn and staghorn and devil’s fingers, the tall, sky-reaching tendrils of the ocotillo.
She was bendable light: she shone around every corner of my day.
She taught me to revel. She taught me to wonder. She taught me to laugh. My sense of humor had always measured up to everyone else’s; but timid, introverted me, I showed it sparingly: I was a smiler. In her presence I threw back my head and laughed out loud for the first time in my life.
She saw things. I had not known there was so much to see.
She was forever tugging my arm and saying, “Look!”
I would look around, seeing nothing. “Where?”
“I love fillers!” she exclaimed.
“What are fillers?” I said.
She explained that fillers are little items that are not considered important enough to be a story or to have a headline. They’re never more than one column wide, never more than an inch or two deep. They are most commonly found at the bottoms of inside pages, where the eye seldom travels. […] A filler doesn’t need to be “news.” It doesn’t need to be important. It doesn’t even need to be read. All it’s asked to do is take up space. A filler might come from anywhere and be about anything. […] It might mention that so-and-so’s cat is missing. Or that so-and-so has a collection of antique marbles.
“I search through fillers like a prospector digging for gold,” she said.
She looked magnificently, wonderfully, gloriously ordinary. She looked just like a hundred other girls at Mica High. Stargirl had vanished into a sea of them, and I was thrilled. She slid a stick of chewing gum into her mouth and chewed away noisily. She winked at me. She reached out and tweaked my cheek the way my grandmother would and said, “What’s up, cutie?” I grabbed her, right there outside the lunchroom in the swarming mob. I didn’t care if others were watching. In fact, I hoped they were. I grabbed her and squeezed her. I had never been so happy and so proud in my life.
Susan’s eyes were glistening. “Did moas have a voice?”
The teacher thought about it. “I don’t know. I don’t know if anybody knows.”
Susan looked out the window at the passing desert. “I heard a mockingbird back there. And it made me think of something Archie said […] He said he believes mockingbirds may do more than imitate other birds. I mean, other living birds. He thinks they may also imitate the sounds of birds that are no longer around. He thinks the sounds of extinct birds are passed down the years from mockingbird to mockingbird […] He says when a mockingbird sings, for all we know it’s pitching fossils into the air. He says who knows what songs of ancient creatures we may be hearing out there.”
We swung around back to the parking lot and— yes— there was a car, and another car. And people, three of them, shading their eyes in the sun, watching us. Two of them were teachers. The other was a student, Dori Dilson. She stood apart from the teachers, alone in the black shimmering sea of asphalt. As we approached, she held up a sign, a huge cardboard sign bigger than a basketball backboard. She set the sign on edge and propped it up, erasing herself. The red painted letters said:
WAY TO GO,
SUSAN
WE’RE PROUD OF
YOU
The car stopped in front of it. All that was left to see of Dori Dilson were two sets of fingers holding the sides of the sign. We were close enough now to see that the sign was trembling, and I knew that behind it Dori was crying. There was no confetti, no kazoos. Nothing cheered, not even a mockingbird.
