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The Theme Of Identity In Jerry Spinelli's Stargirl

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Jerry Spinelli’s in his novel Stargirl is filled with excessive symbols and the message of the novel is easily revealed through the insights of the main character, Leo Borlock. This is primarily due to the fact that it is basically a major change and then resettlement of the high school routine. Before Susan’s or Stargirl visit to Mica, Arizona the town was filled with cactus, suburb life and conformity. Excessive themes in Stargirl comes in forms of identity, exploration, society, love and friendship. The symbolism for these things are woven into the pages of the book. One of the main symbols in Stargirl is the idea of an identity and the attachment of names to that identity. One of the reasons Susan (Stargirl) is ostracized in the beginning of the book is because of the name she chose to identify herself with. Stargirl is an unusual …show more content…

To her counter parts her name was made up which to the general populations defense, it was. Susan’s decision to be called Stargirl is what gave a gate way for other students to treat her differently because did not identify herself as average and she would not stay in the norms of the population. In Stargirl’s identity, clothes also became a statement for her to express herself to the people around her using nonverbal cues. Stargirl thrives on her own, free of labels and social expectations. Susan’s choice of clothes also make her identity hard to define in terms of trendy and hip. In one chapter of the book Stargirl is described wearing “red overall-shorts and has dotted freckles on her face”. The novel’s word choice of “dotted” creates the idea that Stargirl does not

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