146:..."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." (
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An old man had a habit of early morning walks on the beach. One day, after a storm, he saw a human figure in the distance moving like a dancer. As he came closer he saw that it was a young woman and she was not dancing but was reaching down to the sand, picking up a starfish and very gently
127:"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."
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It was also adapted into a children's story in 2006. Called, "Sara and the
Starfish," it re-tells the story from the eyes of a young girl as well as the starfish itself, though the moral of the story is the same as the original idea told by Eiseley.
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and on internet sites, often without attribution, since at least the mid-1980s. In this version the conversation is related between other characters, an older man and a younger one, a wise man and a little girl, or Jesus and a man.
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It appears unattributed in a 1991 novel by Dan
Millman, in which a spiritual seeker asks his wise teacher, "here are so many – how can make any difference?" She replies, "It makes a difference to this one."
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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:
121:"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.
130:..."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."
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The old man looked at the young woman inquisitively and thought about what she had done. Inspired, he joined her in throwing starfish back into the sea. Soon others joined,
200:"But young lady, do you not realise that there are miles and miles of beach and starfish all along it? You cannot possibly make a difference."
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The young woman listened politely, paused and then bent down, picked up another starfish and threw it into the sea, past the breaking waves,
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The story describes the narrator walking along the beach early one morning in the pre-dawn twilight, when he sees a man picking up a
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is also the title of a 1978 anthology of
Eiseley's works (including the essay), which he completed shortly before his death.
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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.
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A charity which uses the starfish story as its motto.
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358:The worldwide 'thousand dinners of hope' campaign
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361:. South Africa: Starfish Charity. 25 April 2003.
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398:starfish-greathearts.org
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229:The Unexpected Universe
83:The Unexpected Universe
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