Starfish

Poems 1-30 establish Starfish’s emotional setting, including important relationships that drive Ellie’s development and the events of the narrative. Ellie’s first-person perspective, complemented by the use of verse, heightens the novel’s personal nature and allows the reader greater connection with her.

Poems 1-6 provide exposition on Ellie’s internal landscape, including the experiences and perceptions that drive her internal conflicts. She begins the novel in a pool, a liminal space where she feels weightless and free. While the tone of Poem 1: “For Just a While” is light-hearted and uses onomatopoeia to reflect a cheerful, child-like diction—establishing the narrator as a child close to the intended audience’s age—the final stanza shifts into a more melancholic, reflective tone, as Ellie reflects: “As soon as I slip into the pool, / I am weightless. / Limitless. / For just a while” (1). This establishes the pool’s significance as a safe space for Ellie, albeit an escape from shame imposed by others. Thus, the pool captures Ellie’s central conflicts—the challenges imposed upon her by her weight, both in how others treat her and how she perceives herself.

The poems that follow Poem 1 detail the childhood event that catalyzed Ellie’s subsequent bullying and provide insight into her Fat Girl Rules. The final stanza and line of Poem 4: “Fat Girl Rules” encompass the rules’ core point: “You don’t deserve / to be seen or heard, / to take up room, / to be noticed. / / Make yourself small” (5). “Fat Girl Rules” provides insight into how Ellie perceives herself, a conflict which drives her primary emotional arc. This rule also governs her interactions, as she is suspicious of others’ intentions and only lets her guard down with close friends like Viv.

Relationships are a significant part of the narrative’s emotional setting. Ellie’s relationships with others are an important driving force, and her most significant ones are established in Poems 1-30—chief among them being Ellie’s budding friendship with new neighbor Catalina. Ellie uses metaphor to describe her compatibility with Catalina the first time they meet. As the girls dance together in Poem 11: “Shadows,” Ellie describes herself and Catalina as “peanut butter and jelly. / Cookies and milk. / Chips and salsa. / We’re different, but / make a perfect combo” (13). While Ellie still sees them as contradictory, she nonetheless highlights the natural way they complement each other, suggesting Catalina’s developing role as a friend.

In addition to Catalina, therapist Dr. Wood becomes another important source of support for Ellie. Catalina and Dr. Wood parallel each other, as Ellie is initially suspicious of both and reluctant to open up. While Ellie concludes in Poem 15: “A Fresh Start” that Catalina is trustworthy, she has yet to reach the same conclusion with Dr. Wood, though she eventually does in subsequent poems. Both Catalina and Dr. Wood are important characters in conveying the theme of The Importance of Support from Others, with the similarities in their introductions establishing Ellie’s arc as learning to trust and rely on others.

Poem 17: “Family for Breakfast” highlights Ellie’s familial relationships. Ellie uses the simile of a teeter-totter to describe her role in the family and indicate the precarious, unstable position she occupies between her parents, who represent opposite reactions to Ellie. Dad is Ellie’s only supporter in the family, treating her with love and respect, while Mom fixates on Ellie needing to lose weight. Both Ellie and Mom have a gift for language, but the way they use it differs. Ellie contrasts her gift for storytelling with Mom’s job as a journalist, using their roles as an analogy for how they each approach the world. Ellie wants to “help people feel what it’s like / to live in / someone else’s skin,” while Mom is “determined to expose / all that’s wrong with the world / and spotlight everyone’s flaws” (21). This suggests that Ellie approaches the world with acceptance and compassion, while she perceives Mom as a rigid and uncompromising critic. Ellie’s bullying by her peers and Mom’s emotional abuse reinforce the theme of The Power of Words, as words can be as much a force of great harm as they can a force of positive transformation. Ellie’s primary arc has to do with how she internalizes hurtful words but comes to rise above them—partially through others’ support and her own writing, developing the theme Defending Yourself Without Attacking Others.

Poems 21-25 establish Ellie’s relationships with her classmates and the school itself. Her diction clearly conveys the contempt and dread she holds for school. She refers to it as a “devil” (27) and calls her bullies “enemies” (30). She likens her classmates to a “piranha with their gnashing teeth” and “part hyena with their howling laughter” (30) to communicate the powerlessness she feels at school—like prey at the mercy of a predator. Ellie’s diction changes, however, in Poem 25: “Lifesaving Librarians.” She calls the library her “safe harbor” (31), her gentler tone reinforcing The Power of Words (as the library is literally a place of words and learning).

Poems 28-30 are a significant turning point for Ellie and the theme of Self-Acceptance: Being Comfortable Taking Up Space. The plus-size boutique is a symbol of hope for Ellie, as it teaches her that she doesn’t have to change herself to fit into the world; there is a place for her just as she is. Poem 30: “I’m a Starfish” introduces the starfish symbol, which represents Ellie’s first steps in her journey toward self-acceptance. The pool as a symbol of escape transforms into a symbol of expression, reinforced by its juxtaposition with the starfish symbol: “Now I want the pool to be something more, / not only a place to escape, / but also a place to express myself. / / As I float, / I spread out my arms / and my legs. / I’m a starfish, / taking up all the room I want” (41). This fusion of the pool and starfish symbolizes Ellie’s transformation into someone who accepts herself.