Once upon a time, there was an old man who used to go to the ocean to do his writing.
Early one morning, he was walking along the shore
after a big storm had passed and found the vast beach littered with starfish as
far as the eye could see, stretching in both directions.
Off in the distance,
the old man noticed a small boy approaching.
As the boy walked, he paused every so often and as he grew closer, the
man could see that he was occasionally bending down to pick up an object and throw
it into the sea.
The boy came closer
still and the man called out, “Good morning!
May I ask what it is that you are doing?”
The young boy paused, looked up, and replied “Throwing
starfish into the ocean. The tide has washed them up onto the beach and they
can’t return to the sea by themselves,” the youth replied. “When the sun gets
high, they will die, unless I throw them back into the water.”
The old man replied, “But there must be tens of thousands of
starfish on this beach. I’m afraid you won’t really be able to make much of a
difference.”
The boy bent down, picked up yet another starfish and threw
it as far as he could into the ocean. Then he turned, smiled and said, “It made
a difference to that one!”
The next day, the man got all of his friends to help the boy throw starfish into the sea.
Adapted from The Star Thrower, by Loren Eiseley (1907 –
1977)
“A single, ordinary person still can make a difference – and
single, ordinary people are doing precisely that every day.” Chris Bohjalian
"The Star Thrower" (or "starfish story") is part of a 16-page essay of the same name by Loren Eiseley (1907–1977), published in 1969 in The Unexpected Universe. The Star Thrower is also the title of a 1978 anthology of Eiseley's works (including the essay), which he completed shortly before his death.
The original story describes the narrator walking along the beach
early one morning in the pre-dawn twilight, when he sees a man picking up a
starfish off the sand and throwing it into the sea. The narrator is observant
and subtle, but skeptical; he has seen many "collectors" on the
beach, killing countless sea creatures for their shells.
Some excerpts:
Some excerpts:
“ In a pool of sand and silt a
starfish had thrust its arms up stiffly and was holding its body away from the
stifling mud. "It's still alive," I ventured.
"Yes," he said, and with a quick yet gentle
movement he picked up the star and spun it over my head and far out into the
sea. It sunk in a burst of spume, and the waters roared once more.
..."There are not many who come this far," I said,
groping in a sudden embarrassment for words. "Do you collect?"
"Only like this," he said softly, gesturing amidst
the wreckage of the shore. "And only for the living." He stooped
again, oblivious of my curiosity, and skipped another star neatly across the
water. "The stars," he said, "throw well. One can help
them."
..."I do not collect," I said uncomfortably, the
wind beating at my garments. "Neither the living nor the dead. I gave it
up a long time ago. Death is the only successful collector."
— The Star Thrower, p. 172
Later, after some thoughts on our relationships to other
animals and to the universe, the narrator returns to the beach:
..."On a point of land, I found the star thrower...I
spoke once briefly. "I understand," I said. "Call me another
thrower." Only then I allowed myself to think, He is not alone any longer.
After us, there will be others...Perhaps far outward on the rim of space a
genuine star was similarly seized and flung...For a moment, we cast on an
infinite beach together beside an unknown hurler of suns... We had lost our
way, I thought, but we had kept, some of us, the memory of the perfect circle
of compassion from life to death and back to life again." (The Star
Thrower, p.181)
Song: The Value of One
