19 pages • 38 minutes read
Ada LimónDead Stars
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Stars
Stars, both living and dead, appear throughout the poem, and represent humans’ connectedness to the natural world. In the third stanza, the speaker and the other character look up to the stars for the first time. They spot Orion, but they don’t remember the other constellations, prompting the speaker to ruminate on forgotten history and humans' forgotten connectedness to nature. By the end of the poem, the speaker is filled with a desire to protect the natural world and care for others. These hopeful and empathetic actions are larger than life, and Limón employs celestial imagery again to show that these are worthy pursuits: “[I]f we launched our demands into the sky, made / ourselves so big / people could point to us with the arrows they make / in their minds” (Lines 39-42). In the poem, living stars reawaken humanity’s connection to nature and Limón uses that spark to show that defending nature is a worthwhile pursuit.
The titular dead stars appear as well, further intertwining humans and nature. In Limón’s poem, human civilization is not disparate from nature and the dead stars enhance this symbolic connection. Humans come from stars; they’re the building blocks of human bodies. Remembering this, the speaker wants to reclaim a sense of unity with the universe, leading into the poem’s central theme of creating a better world. Using living and dead stars, Limón's speaker promotes reconnection and defends all living things.
The Earth
Like the sky and stars above, Limón uses the earth to enhance the visuals of her poem. “Dead Stars” opens with imagery of darkened trees and yellowing leaves, then likens the speaker to a dwelling of spiders. These earthly images quickly place the poem in a setting dominated by nature, allowing Limón to early develop her commentary on the natural world. Limón returns to the earthly images in the tenth and eleventh stanzas. In the tenth, the rising tides create urgency for humans to act against climate change. In the eleventh stanza, Limón describes the earth as lacking its own voice, calling on the reader to speak up for all the species that can’t speak for themselves: “Stood for the many mute mouths of the sea, of the land?” (Lines 33-34) Throughout “Dead Stars,” earthly imagery creates additional connections for people to discover and increases the urgency of the call to take better care of the planet.
The Body
In addition to the stars and the earth, Limón uses the human body to develop her themes. Throughout, bodily images heighten the drama of the poem. Remembering their origins as a dead star, the speaker feels their mouth is full of dust: “But mostly we’re forgetting we’re dead stars too, my / mouth is full / of dust and I wish to reclaim the rising—” (Lines 18-20). “Dead Stars” contemplates the stars and the night sky, but images like the mouth full of dust keeps the poem rooted within the speaker’s body, grounding the poem, and keeping it from feeling too ethereal and abstract.
Later, Limón again uses human anatomy to increase the stakes of defending the earth. If people defend the earth, it will require not just their minds, but their bodies: “What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and / said, No” (Lines 29-30). Synapses and flesh remind the reader of the weight of the human body, showing that creating a better world will be difficult. Using the human body, Limón complicates and dramatizes her calls for hope, giving them complexity and dramatic stakes.
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By Ada Limón
