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Chapter 24
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
For days, Leo avoids Stargirl. He wants both her and his classmates, but he tries to avoid choosing; he just hides instead. Stargirl keeps pursuing him. One day she finds him in the TV studio and grabs his collar. He follows her out to the courtyard, where she asks if they’re breaking up already. Leo explains that he doesn’t want to, but that something has to change—nobody talks to him or sees him. Stargirl sadly tries to comfort him: “It’s no fun not being seen, is it?”
Leo lacks the courage to break the ongoing stalemate until Stargirl forces the issue. Stargirl, who is always looking out for marginalized, unnoticed people, is sympathetic to his feelings—ironic, because she’s the cause of the school’s ostracism and oblivious to the fact.
Themes
Leo asks Stargirl if the shunning bothers her. She says that Leo, Dori, Archie, and her family talk to her. Leo isn’t satisfied. He says he wants to understand what makes Stargirl “tick”: why doesn’t she care what everybody thinks? She doesn’t even seem to know what they think. Stargirl seems unsure what he means by “everybody,” and asks if he cares what they think. Leo says yes; after all, “I’m in touch with everybody. I’m one of them. How could I not know?”
The big difference between Leo and Stargirl finally comes to the forefront. Although Leo is a sympathetic defender of Stargirl, he’s also connected to “everybody else” in a way she’s never been, and that poses an unavoidable problem. Leo is frustrated that Stargirl, so intuitive in other respects, doesn’t share his intuitive sense of what “everybody” thinks.
Themes
Stargirl tries to understand why it matters what everybody thinks. Leo says it does—just look at the fact that nobody’s talking to them. He tells Stargirl that you can’t just “not give a crap what anybody thinks,” or cheer for an opposing team, or care about Kovac, if you want your own school to like you.
Just as Stargirl has certain instincts that lie undeveloped in others—a sensitivity to nature and others’ emotions, for example—she also lacks instincts that come naturally to other kids and can’t easily be explained, like siding with one’s own team.
Themes
Stargirl doesn’t even recognize Kovac’s name, or understand why her concern for him was seen as offensive by her classmates. She didn’t think about any of that when she ran to help him—she just acted. Leo starts feeling sorry for Stargirl. Speaking gently, he tries to explain that her homeschooled background makes it hard for her to understand such things, but she can’t just decide not to care about everyone else’s opinions.
The things that Stargirl takes for granted, like helping others, don’t even register as significant in her memory. The school, by contrast, can’t stop thinking about them. Leo begins to speak rather patronizingly to Stargirl, as she continues to find his perspective incomprehensible.
Themes
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Speaking in a “little girl” voice, Stargirl asks, “You can’t? […] But how do you keep track of the rest of the world?” Leo says that “you just know. Because you’re connected.” Stargirl bursts into tears: “I’m not connected!”
Over the next few days, Leo tries to educate Stargirl in “the ways of people”—like why you can’t cheer for everybody, or barge into a stranger’s funeral, or sing “Happy Birthday” to someone in public. This is because people belong to groups, and group loyalty is very strong—instinctive, even. Groups are held together by people acting the same, and Leo thinks that Stargirl should act more like everybody else, too. When Stargirl presses him as to why this is, Leo admits that nobody—them, of course, not Leo himself—likes her. And after all, whether they like it or not, “we live in a world of them.” Leo tries to make it clear that he doesn’t include himself among “them.” But two days later, Stargirl is gone.
Leo tries to walk a fine line by explaining group dynamics to Stargirl, without aligning himself too sharply with “them.” Ultimately, he can’t quite explain why caring what “they” think is important—any more than Stargirl can make everyone see the world as she does.
Themes
