"She's homeschooled, you know. Her mother brought her to me. I guess she wanted a break from playing teacher. One day a week. Four, five—yes, five years now."
Kevin pointed. "You created her!"
Archie smiled, puffed. "No, that was done long before me" (7.19-21).
By accusing Archie of creating Stargirl, Kevin clearly shows his beliefs about identity. He believes that people are a product of their environment; that they are made by the people around them. Archie, however, thinks otherwise. He thinks her identity was created long before he met her. How long before? Was Stargirl's identity created when, say, humans were made from stars?
We said "adios" 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" (7.50).
Archie names a lot of things that you might not expect, like a cactus. This naming is a way of emphasizing the fact that all things are connected. Maybe everything has an identity, even the stuff in nature that lacks a brain.
"Well, this fellow here lost his game, too. He was winning for ten million years or so, but found himself in a different league. He hung in there as well as he could. He scored his points, but he kept falling farther and farther behind. The opposition was better, quicker, keener. In the championship game, our boy got annihilated. Not only didn't he show up for class the next day, he never showed up, period. They never saw him again" (15.13).
What might Archie be trying to tell his students here? Like all things Archie, this nugget of wisdom is a bit vague, and a bit confusing. He holds up the skull of a (long extinct) animal and compares the species to a team. Even though the animal species existed successfully for many years, eventually it was wiped out by another. He may be talking about the inevitability of losing. All things lose in the end, so it is not the end result that should matter. There will always be someone who is better than you, smarter than you, quicker than you. Eventually, you will lose. It's not good or bad. It's just the cold, hard truth.
"She is us more than we are us. She is, I think, who we really are. Or were" (7.17).
According to Archie, Stargirl is closer to a "pure" human than most people. Stargirl is not corrupted by society's rules about how a person should act or be. She is like ancient people who were much more connected to the world around them and considered themselves as part of the earth, not as conquerors of it, like many people think today.
"So, it's not just an act?" said Kevin.
"An act? No. If anybody is acting, it's us. She's as real as"—he looked around; he picked up the tiny, wedge-like skull of Barney, a 60-million-year-old rodent, and held it up—"as real as Barney" (7.24-25).
When they ask Archie for his thoughts on whether Stargirl is real or not, Archie connects her to the ancient past by comparing her to an ancient rodent. (And yes, this is probably the only time in your life you will ever hear someone compare someone to an old rat and mean it as a compliment instead of an insult.) You see, both Stargirl and the ancient skull are. They exist. They are there. They do not pretend to be something other than what they are.
"Well, this fellow here lost his game, too. He was winning for ten million years or so, but found himself in a different league. He hung in there as well as he could. He scored his points, but he kept falling farther and farther behind. The opposition was better, quicker, keener. In the championship game, our boy got annihilated. Not only didn't he show up for class the next day, he never showed up, period. They never saw him again" (15.13).
This somewhat confusing quote from Archie is comparing an ancient animal's battle with survival to their high school basketball team's battle to win. Both the animal and the team were able to succeed for a long time, but both end the same way, with losing. The animal? Extinct. The basketball team? Well, they fell to a stronger team. We're betting Archie thinks it's helpful to keep things in perspective like this. All things win until they lose. It's like a cosmic game we all play.
"It's in the morning, for most of us. It's that time, those few seconds when we're coming out of sleep but we're not really awake yet. For those few seconds we're something more primitive than what we are about to become. We have just slept the sleep of our most distant ancestors, and something of them and their world still clings to us. For those few moments we are unformed, uncivilized. We are not the people we know as ourselves, but creatures more in tune with a tree than a keyboard. We are untitled, un-named, natural, suspended between was and will be, the tadpole before the frog, the worm before the butterfly. We could be. And then… we open our eyes and the day is before us and… we become ourselves" (19.37-38).
Do you have those moments in the early morning before you open your eyes? When you are waking up tomorrow, try to think about this idea and see what happens. Archie believes it is in these few moments as we are waking up that we are the closest to our past and our true humanity. Sounds like a good way to start the day.
"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" (27.70).
As Archie has pointed out to Stargirl, mockingbirds do not have their own song; they copy the sounds of the birds around them. If this is the case, it is totally possible that they have been imitating the sounds of extinct birds that their ancestors heard and copied. It would be fascinating to hear the sounds that existed on this planet many, many years ago, wouldn't it? Here's hoping Archie's right.
"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." (27.72).
This really cool thought makes Shmoop want to know way more about these fossil pitchers. Just how long have mockingbirds been around?
"Star people are rare. You'll be lucky to meet another."
"Star people?" I said. "You're losing me here."
He chuckled. "That's okay. I lose myself. It's just my odd-ball way of accounting for someone I don't really understand any more than you do."
"So where do stars come in"
He pointed with the pipe stem. "The perfect question. In the beginning, that's where they come in. They supplied the ingredients that became us, the primordial elements. We are star stuff, yes?" He held up the skull of Barney, the Paleocene rodent. "Barney too, hm?"
"And I think every once in a while someone comes along who is a little more primitive than the rest of us, a little closer to our beginnings, a little more in touch with the stuff we're made of" (32. 17-23).
Here it is, folks, the key to understanding Stargirl, and maybe even ourselves. You see, humans are made of stardust. Nope, we're not crazy. It's totally the truth. Most of us go blithely through life having forgotten this awesome fact. But Stargirl hasn't forgotten. And this means she is more deeply connected to our past as stars than any of the other characters of the novel. She's Stargirl because she remembers: we are all made of stars.
The skin on his arms had become dry and flaky, as if his body were preparing itself to rejoin the earth… He asked for the bag. I was shocked at what he took from it.
"Barney!"
The skull of the Paleocene rodent.
"This is home," he said (33.13-17).
In this scene a much older Archie is burying the skull of Barney in a rock. He tells the skull that he is home, because he is back in the earth, where he came from. So instead of leaving earth for heaven when we die, Stargirl suggests we return to it.
"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" (7.50).
Like a true sage, Archie is full of cryptic and confusing advice. Of course these instructions eventually become totally clear. So why not be clear in the first place? Well, like most good teachers, Archie knows that the way to help people learn is to help them understand that questions can be even more important than answers. Instead of wanting answers all the time, Leo should probably spend some time thinking about why he's asking these questions in the first place.