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Holes (novel)

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Holes
File:Holes.jpg
2001 Paperback edition cover
AuthorLouis Sachar
LanguageEnglish
GenreYoung adult
PublisherFarrar Straus & Giroux Inc
Publication date
1998
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (Hardcover or Paperback)
Pages256 pp
ISBNISBN 0-374-33265-7 Parameter error in {{ISBNT}}: invalid character
Followed byStanley Yelnats' Survival Guide to Camp Green Lake (2003)' 

Holes is a Newbery Medal-winning novel by Louis Sachar. It was later adapted into a screenplay for the 2003 film by Walt Disney Pictures, which starred Sigourney Weaver and Jon Voight. In 2006, Sachar published Small Steps, a companion novel.

Plot summary

Holes's first cover
Holes's first cover

The story's protagonist, Stanley Yelnats IV, is wrongfully convicted of stealing a pair of sneakers donated to a charity by Clyde Livingston, and is sentenced to 18 months of service at Camp Green Lake, a boy's juvenile detention center in Texas. There, each inmate must spend his day in the dry desert (which was the bed of the camp's namesake lake), digging a hole five feet deep and five feet in diameter. The Warden and guards at Camp Green Lake claim that they are digging to build character and break them of their criminal habits, but it is left to Stanley Yelnats to find out the truth.

Synopsis

The book's contemporary plot is closely tied to two back stories, occurring 110 years earlier. The first tells of Stanley's great-great-grandfather Elya Yelnats and his son; the second relates the history of Green Lake.

The story of Stanley's ancestors

Stanley's great-great-grandfather was named Elya Yelnats. He was born in Latvia. When he was fifteen years old he fell in love with a neighbor, Myra Menke. Elya went to Myra's father to ask for her hand, but he found he wasn't the only one to do so: Igor Barkov, a 57-year-old pig farmer, was his rival. For Myra's hand, Igor was willing to trade a large pig, which seemed to Myra's father a more substantial dowry than Elya's promise of affection.

Elya visited Madame Zeroni, a one-legged Egyptian gypsy, to ask her for advice. Madame Zeroni told him that he was too young to marry and that Myra was stupid and spoiled. She proposed that Elya should go to America, but he refused on the grounds of his desire. To help him, Madame Zeroni gave a runt from her sow's litter to Elya. She instructed him to carry it up a mountain each day, let it drink from a stream which ran uphill, and sing a given song to it. The pig then would grow fat enough to please Myra's father. After he finished carrying the pig up to the mountain for the last time, he should do the same to Madame Zeroni. She warned him that if he failed to do this last, he and his descendants would be cursed for eternity.

Elya did as he was told. On Myra's birthday, he bathed rather than carry the pig to the stream. Elya then gave his pig to Myra's father, who weighed the pigs and found their weights identical. He left the decision to Myra, who was incapable of making a decision and relied instead on guessing games. Elya, disgusted and heartbroken, gave the pig to Myra as a wedding present and went to America. Later, he remembered that he had failed to carry Madame Zeroni to the top of the mountain. He felt very sorry because he understood that it was her wish to drink from the stream before her death.

In America, Elya fell in love with a woman named Sarah Miller and married her. Because their life was plagued by ill fortune, he came to believe himself cursed.

His wife called their son "Stanley" because she noticed it was "Yelnats" spelled backwards. This naming became tradition, so that the Stanley in the main story line is actually Stanley Yelnats IV. Elya translated the song which he had sung to the pig into English while his wife changed it to make it rhyme. The song and Elya's story were passed from generation to generation.

History of Green Lake

The name Green Lake belonged once to a lake as well as to a town built beside it. This town housed a small human populace, of whom three are germane to the novel's plot: Katherine Barlow, the schoolteacher, who is locally famous for her beauty and for her spiced peaches; Sam, the onion picker, who is locally famous for the medicinal properties of his onions; and Katherine's unpleasant suitor Charles "Trout" Walker, who is locally famous for his motorboat and his athlete's foot. When Katherine's schoolhouse began to collapse and decay, Sam repaired it. Over time, his skill and his pleasant character cause her to have a strong liking for him. These passions are satisfied by a kiss.

Because Katherine is white, and Sam African American, the townspeople consider their courtship illegitimate. They call for Sam's death, which is supported by local law. Sam is ultimately killed. In response, Katherine kills the sheriff and becomes a bandit, known as "Kissing Kate". This is due to the fact that she kisses men after she robs and kills them. Thereafter, the lake dries. From the first Stanley Yelnats, a wealthy stockbroker, "Kissing Kate" robs a large quantity of money, leaving him to die in the desert. She returns to the rapidly drying lake, where she conceals the stolen money. Charles Walker and his new wife Linda discover her there, half delusional, and demand that she give them that which she has concealed. She dies of a Yellow-Spotted Lizard's venomous bite, and the secret is not revealed.

Stanley Yelnats I finds water and wild onions — the very onions harvested by Sam — atop a butte that he names "God's Thumb" for its shape. By consumption of these, he is able to survive. He later marries the nurse who took care of him in the hospital and starts a family. Since then, his future generations have slid into poverty.

Stanley's story

Stanley Yelnats IV is sent to Camp Green Lake as punishment for stealing the shoes donated by famous baseball player Clyde "Sweet Feet" Livingston to an orphanage; a crime he did not commit. The shoes had been stolen by Madame Zeroni's vagrant descendant, Hector, who upon learning of their purpose abandoned them atop a trestle. Thence, they literally fell onto Stanley, who was then walking below.

At Camp Green Lake, Stanley is assigned to D Tent and given instructions to dig holes conforming to the given description each day. He is to report all incidental discoveries to the camp's counselor, Mr. Pendanski. Before his life at Camp Green Lake, Stanley is teased and bullied by his schoolmates. His family lives in a cramped apartment, and his father tries, with constant failure, to discover a way to recycle old sneakers. Over the following weeks, spent in Camp Green Lake, Stanley gains strength, stamina, and the acceptance of his peers.

Hector Zeroni has also been sent to Camp Green Lake. Although he is treated with contempt by his peers, who mockingly nickname him "Zero", Stanley befriends him.

During the digging, Stanley discovers a golden lipstick case that had formerly belonged to Katherine Barlow. Persuaded by X-Ray, the self-appointed leader of the tent's community of inmates, Stanley does not reveal that he has discovered this, but attributes it to X-Ray instead. Later, this discovery and the attention it is given leads him to believe that the camp's Warden, Ms. Walker, is searching for something in particular.

Because Stanley is the only inmate who writes to his mother, albeit with much falsification of his experiences, the illiterate Zero requests to be taught how to read and write. Stanley, though hesitant, eventually complies, in exchange for Zero's help in digging holes. When the other boys learn of this, they accuse Stanley of racism.

Later, Hector Zeroni clashes with the camp's officers after they blatantly mock him. He escapes the camp. Hector cannot survive without food and water in the desert; therefore Stanley, who has come to view Zero as his friend, pursues him. He finds Hector underneath a derelict rowboat that had apparently belonged to one of the inhabitants of Green Lake. Hector has been surviving by consumption of the substance he names "Sploosh", which is a fermentation of Katherine Barlow's spiced peaches.

Because Stanley has seen, during his days at Camp Green Lake, a butte that he believes to be the "God's Thumb" on which his ancestor found refuge, he and Zero travel to it. There, they discover wild onions and fresh water, much as their predecessors had done. These onions help cure Hector, who had been increasingly ill from the contaminated "Sploosh". During this, Stanley feeds Hector water and sings the melody to him, unintentionally fulfilling the unconsummated charge laid on his ancestor Elya. Almost simultaneously, Stanley's father is able to create a new concoction, which can help cure foot odor. While they rest and recuperate, Stanley comes to believe that they might discover the Warden's secret and capture that which she seeks. They therefore return to the camp in secret and do so.

The thing for which the Warden (and, it is revealed, her ancestors Charles and Linda Walker) have searched is the wealth taken from Stanley's namesake. Stanley and Zero discover and retain it, even under pressure from the Warden and her aides along with the threat of the Yellow-spotted lizards. Luckily, the onions in their systems were able to act as a repellent to the latter. After a night of tension, a lawyer arrives, accusing the Warden of cruel and criminal actions. Stanley, Zero, and the sought-after money are taken to safety. Camp Green Lake is disqualified and converted into a Girl Scout camp. This change represents situational irony, as the camp's staff often had chided boys who complained of harsh conditions with the message, "This isn't a Girl Scout camp."

The fortune consists of many jewels, which turn out to be of poor quality and only worth about $20,000 in total. However, also included were stock certificates, deeds of trust, and promissory notes of the first Stanley Yelnats. These ensure, for the current Stanley and Hector, $1,000,000 per person. Stanley buys his family a large house, and they become very prosperous. Hector is able to hire a team of private investigators to help find and reunite him with his mother. At Stanley's party, at which Clyde Livingston and Hector attended to watch the televised commercial for Stanley's father's new cure for foot odor (named "Sploosh") Hector is seen with his mother, who sings her version of the ancestral melody to him.

Characters in Holes

Main character descriptions

Stanley Yelnats is an outcast teenager with no friends. He was sent to Camp Green Lake because he was said to have stolen a famous baseball player's sneakers. His family is said to be cursed. It all started with his "no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing" great-great-grandfather whose name was Elya Yelnats. Elya wanted to get help with romancing a young lady, for which he sought help from a fortune teller named Madame Zeroni. She advised him to carry a pig up the mountain every day, where it would drink of a stream of water and listen to him singing a song, until it was time to give the pig to the young lady's father as a wedding gift. The only stipulation was that Elya was to remember Madame Zeroni when he won the young lady's hand in marriage. He was to carry her up the mountain so she could drink from the stream. He carried the pig up the mountain and sang the song as Madame Zeroni had instructed. To his doom, Elya forgot to carry Madame Zeroni up the mountain; thus his great-great-great grandson pays for his misfortune.

Armpit

A large African-American boy at Camp Green Lake. Brusque but loyal to his friends, especially to X-ray, the self-appointed leader of the group. Although his real name is Theodore, he is nicknamed "Armpit," as explained in the book's sequel, because of pain in the flesh between his arm and his torso. He was sent to Camp Green Lake "because of a bucket of popcorn," which is lightly explained in the book's sequel. In the movie, when Stanley leaves Camp Green Lake, Armpit requests that he call his mother and tell her, "Theodore says he's sorry." (In the book, however, it's Squid (Alan) who makes this request.)

Sam

Sam, an African-American, was known as the onion man to the town of Green Lake during the late 1800s. He sold onions from a cart pulled by his donkey, Mary Lou. Once or twice a week Sam would row across the lake to sell his onions, from whose extracts he made every type of ointment, syrup, lotion and paste for curing many different ailments, including asthma and baldness. These assertions are not proven true or false until many years later.

X-Ray

X-Ray, whose nickname is pig Latin for his proper name Rex, is D Tent's leader. He is street-smart and dictates to the other boys. He is a bit manipulative and mean as well, as shown when he asks Stanley for the credit of finding Kissing Kate's lipstick tube. He with the others later accuses Stanley of being racist to Hector, even though X-Ray himself dislikes Hector. At the end of the book, when Camp Green Lake is closed down and the other boys cheer Stanley, X-Ray is seen hanging back, and then leaving by himself.

Hector Zeroni, the great-great-great grandson of Madame Zeroni. He is a "Ward of the State" which indicates his lack of parents and his homelessness. He is the fastest digger, yet he is considered least among his neighbors because of his taciturn ways and illiteracy. Eventually he is taught to read by Stanley. His family retains a version of the song taught by Madame Zeroni, which appears more optimistic than that known to Stanley and his ancestors. He is brought to Camp Green Lake because he is caught stealing a brand new pair of sneakers.

Myra Menke

Myra is the spoiled only daughter of a crass Latvian farmer named Boris Menke. She is the object of Elya Yeltnats' affections, in that he desires to marry her and believes that they would live a happy life together, despite the protests of his old friend and confidante, Madame Zeroni, a wise Egyptian mystic of great age. Madame Zeroni does all she can to prevent Elya from ruining his chances of a good life by telling him some home truths about Myra: that she is weak, useless, spoiled, selfish and totally incapable of thinking for herself; that, in Madame Zeroni's own words, "Her [Myra's] head is as empty as a flower pot". Elya refuses to listen and gains Madame Zeroni's help to compete with a rival for Myra. Myra is totally incapable of deciding whom she should marry, though it is remarked that Elya is the better choice compared to the 57-year-old man who competes with him. Disgusted, Elya leaves Myra.

Magnet

Magnet, whose real name is José, is a Hispanic, lively character. Magnet steals whatever he can get his hands on; he is at Camp Green Lake because he stole a puppy. He manages to steal Mr. Sir's bag of sunflower seeds, which complicates matters for Stanley later on.

Katherine 'Kissin' Kate' Barlow

Katherine Barlow, Green Lake's schoolteacher, was in love with Sam the onion seller, who impressed her as a better man with whom to live than many of her suitors. She later became an outlaw because of Sam's death at the hands of an unjust law; she was known for robberies and kissed every man she killed on the lips after applying a fresh coat of lipstick.

Mr. Sir

Mr. Sir serves in a supervisor's capacity at the camp. He is severe, arrogant, and nasty. Once addicted to smoking tobacco, he has quit smoking and eats sunflower seeds constantly. However, at the end of the story, he starts smoking again on the grounds that 'Sunflower seeds won't cut it'

Mr. Pendanski

Mr. Pendanski is the camp's counselor. He appears to be the most compassionate of the staff at Camp Green Lake– leading to the nickname "Mom"– but eventually proves himself to be as egocentric as Mr. Sir. He coolly insults Zero at every turn.

The Warden

The Warden is the camp's director, and a descendant of Charles Walker. When someone finds something valuable in their hole, she lets them have the day off if it impresses her. Her ultimate goal is to find the money taken from the first Stanley Yelnats. Her cabin used to belong to Kissin' Kate Barlow. It's luxurious and air-conditioned, which contrasts heavily with the hot and strict conditions of the Camp.

Twitch

Twitch was a new inmate sent to replace Hector. He is sent to Camp Green Lake because he is a car thief. He is named Twitch because he is extremely jittery, especially when he sees a "nice" car.

Allusions/references from other works

Awards

Film, TV or theatrical adaptations

In 2003, Disney released a film version of Holes, which was directed by Andrew Davis and written by Louis Sachar. It was a faithful adaptation of the novel and was a modest hit at the box office.

Preceded by Newbery Medal recipient
1999
Succeeded by