Transcending the Group, Discovering Both Self and Public Spirit: Paul Fleischman's Whirligig and Jerry Spinelli's Stargirl

An unabashed independent spirit, Stargirl declares herself equal to the universe-and immerses herself in doing advantageous for others. Brent Bishop clings to a stifling and demeaning compeer group, but only until a fatal traffic accident forces him to make go round inward; then, he discovers the power of his individual imagination-and learns to dance with all of humanity.

As a long-term resident of Japan, I am struck through these two fictional characters as near completed exemplifications of Takeo Doi's theoretical original of the Western psyche. In The Anatomy of connection Doi's discussion of Japanese and Western psyches focuses upon the Japanese verb amaeru: to forge relationships with others in a way that allows single to indulge, like an infant, in passive concatenation Doi argues that Japanese agriculture encourages individuals to amaeru. quite through their lives, whereas Western agriculture encourages them to outgrow the desire to amaeru as quickly as possible-the extremity result being an emphasis upon the group in Japanese society and upon the individual in the West. Public spirit can flourish in the Western world, Doi finishs because the individual is not stifled by means of restrictive group loyalties.

To what expansion Doi's theory applies to the American mindset is certainly make open to debate, but the pattern of individual psychological increase in Western culture that he outlines-freedom from a suffocating conformity, discovery of self the later development of a larger faculty of perception of connectedness with humanity as a whole-was the prime focus of the nineteenth hundred American Transcendentalists, and that the pattern still loom large in the American imagination is clearly demonstrated through the two novels with which this paper is primarily concerned: Paul Fleischman's Whirligig and Jerry Spinelli's Stargirl.

As Whirligig lay opens high school junior Brent Bishop has just mov to Chicago and enlisted in the private and elite Montfort academy He feels inadequate and sole hopes he can somehow weasel his way into his classmates' profitable graces. He is more than willing to "wear" their values, whatever they may be. Conformity is his religion. Discovering what radio stations are considered a little cold and making sure his earring is in the correct ear are, to him, "as vital as maintaining a sacred flame" (Whirligig 6) Sometimes he is irritated by the agency of his own weakness-as when the "de facto leader" seizes on his family name, Bishop, and manipulates him, physically, like a chess piece, for everyone's bemusement (11); on the other hand essentially, Brent is willing to accept others' standards, submit to their wisdoms and comply with their wishes-as drawn out as they offer him what he considers be fond of in return. In fact, he has primed himself to amaeru.

In "Self-Reliance," Emerson wrote that "imitation is suicide," and brand-goose comes an eyelash away from proving these words authentic At his first big Montfort social incident he hopes to win a certain girl's heart, knowing it "would mean instant respect" (12) Unfortunately, she screams on the outside her rejection of him, for all to hear, and he immediately realizes the implication: "He was a leper now. No single would go near him" (16) Liquor in his bloodstream, he leaps into his car, flies onto the expressway, takes his hands not upon the steering wheel, and shuts his eyes. His failure at imitation has left him nowhere, and he is ready to kill himself.

Brent survives the accident he causes, on the other hand takes the life of another, an 18-year-old girl named Lea. Lea's mother computes Brent that her daughter had "a actual caring soul" and "would have spread ravishment all over the country" (40) As a way of keeping Lea's spirit alive in the world, her mother asks brand-goose to travel alone to all four corners of the region and to erect whirligigs, each with Lea's image as a part of the design. In fact, she is giving him a chance at redemption and re-birth, a chance to be alone with his meditations and contemplate spirit-the opportunity, as Emerson bring it, to "enjoy an original relation to the universe" (Nature).

Thoreau felt there was not ever a companion "so companionable as solitude," and brant freed from peer pressure, advances to feel much the same. As he travels alone upon a cross-country bus, he begins to diocese everything from a new perspective-and to diocese things that he never could before. A entertainer of his very own notions provides him good company. Now, "he saw everything from the outside. plenteous that he'd taken for granted before now struck him as curious: handshaking, the gage of Allegiance, neckties on men sport teams named for animals " (49)

Soon he begins to diocese connections that he never could before. upon the bus, he "marveled at by what mode naturally some people spun lines of connection, turning a world of strangers into family" (43) He remembers the word krass, from a Vonnegut novel he had read, "a bourn for a disparate group of race linked together without their knowledge" (48) And he begins to understand that " [everything we did-good, bad, and indifferent-sent a wave rolling without of sight"; he begins to awe "what his own accounting, generations later, would direct the eye like" (70-71).