Holes (novel)

Holes is a 1998 young adult novel written by Louis Sachar and first published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The book centers on an unlucky teenage boy named Stanley Yelnats, who is sent to Camp Green Lake, a juvenile detention center in a desert in Texas, after being falsely accused of theft. The plot explores the history of the area and how the actions of several characters in the past have affected Stanley's life in the present. These interconnecting stories touch on themes such as racism, homelessness, illiteracy, and arranged marriage.
The book was both a critical and commercial success. Much of the praise for the book has centered around its complex plot, interesting characters, and representation of people of color and incarcerated youth. It won the 1998 U.S. National Book Award for Young People's Literature and the 1999 Newbery Medal for the year's "most distinguished contribution to American literature for children". In 2012 it was ranked number six among all-time children's novels in a survey published by "School Library Journal".
"Holes" was adapted by Walt Disney Pictures as a feature film of the same name released in 2003. The film received generally positive reviews from critics, grossing $71 million, and was released in conjunction with the book companion "Stanley Yelnats's Survival Guide to Camp Green Lake". A sequel to "Holes" entitled "Small Steps" was published in 2006 and centers on one of the secondary characters in the novel, Armpit.
Plot.
Stanley Yelnats IV is a 14-year-old boy from a hard-working but poor family that is allegedly cursed, for which they blame Stanley's "no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing great-great-grandfather". Stanley's latest stroke of misfortune occurs when he is wrongfully convicted of stealing a pair of athletic shoes that belonged to the famous baseball player Clyde "Sweet Feet" Livingston, who donated the shoes for a charity auction. He is sent to Camp Green Lake, a juvenile corrections facility which is located in the middle of a desert; the lake dried up decades ago and is crawling with highly venomous yellow-spotted lizards, whose bites are always lethal. The inmates are assigned to dig one cylindrical hole each day, five feet wide and five feet deep, which the Warden claims "builds their character". The novel alternates this story with two set in the past, with interrelated but distinct plot lines.
Elya Yelnats.
Stanley's Latvian great-great-grandfather, Elya Yelnats, is in love with Myra, the most beautiful girl in the village. However, he faces competition from the local pig farmer Igor Barkov, who is offering Myra's father Morris his fattest pig in exchange for her hand in marriage. Elya goes to his friend Madame Zeroni, an old Egyptian fortune teller with a missing foot, for help. Despite not approving of Myra as a partner for Elya due to her lack of intelligence, Zeroni takes pity on Elya and gives him a tiny piglet, instructing him to carry it up a mountain every day and let it drink from a stream while singing a special song to it. Each time, the pig will grow bigger. Zeroni says that in return, Elya must then carry her up the mountain and sing to her. She warns him that if he does not do this, his family will be cursed.
Elya follows her directions and the pig grows to be just as large as Igor's. However, after realizing Madame Zeroni was right about Myra's lack of intelligence when she's unable to choose between him or Igor, Elya leaves in disgust and decides to move to America, but forgets his promise to Zeroni. Though he falls in love with and marries the kind and intelligent Sarah Miller, he becomes beset by bad luck. Elya tells Sarah about the curse and tells her to leave him. Sarah refuses to leave Elya and the song that he sang to the pig becomes a lullaby that is passed down among his descendants, hoping that it will one day break the curse.
Kissin' Kate Barlow.
In the year 1888, the town of Green Lake is a flourishing lakeside community. Katherine Barlow, the white local schoolteacher, falls in love with Sam, an African-American onion farmer, while rejecting advances from the wealthy Charles "Trout" Walker. There is an uproar in the town after Katherine and Sam are seen kissing. Seeing a dangerous mob gather, Katherine finds Sam and they attempt to escape across the lake in Sam's rowboat, but Walker and the mob intercept them with Walker's motorboat. Sam is shot dead, while Katherine is "rescued" against her wishes. From then on, rain stops falling upon Green Lake.
Three days later, Katherine kills the town sheriff as revenge for his refusal to help. She then becomes a prominent outlaw called "Kissin' Kate Barlow", nicknamed so for her calling card of leaving a red lipstick kiss on the cheeks of the men she kills. For the next twenty years, she robs multiple banks across the state of Texas. Among her victims is Stanley's great-grandfather, who she leaves stranded in the desert; he survives after finding refuge on "God's thumb". She returns to the ruins of Green Lake and is found by a now-destitute Trout Walker and his wife Linda, one of Katherine's former students who married Trout for his money. They try to force her to reveal where she buried the money she'd stolen, but she refuses, telling them they and their descendants can spend the rest of their lives digging in the desert and never find her loot. She is then bitten by a yellow-spotted lizard. As she succumbs to its venom, Katherine laughs and tells them to start digging, for it will take a lifetime or more for them to ever find the money.
Camp Green Lake.
The Warden allows the inmates the rest of their day off if they find anything "interesting". Stanley begins to suspect the Warden is looking for something. During one dig, he finds one of Barlow's lipstick tubes. He gives it to X-Ray, the ringleader of his group, who pretends to find it the next day. The Warden is excited by the discovery and orders them to enlarge X-Ray's hole. Stanley later befriends Zero, a camper who quietly keeps to himself, and teaches Zero to read in return for Zero digging part of Stanley's holes. This leads to an argument with the other inmates, and then the staff. Zero then flees. The camp staff decide to erase their records of Zero, whose full name is Hector Zeroni, and let him die in the desert.
A few days later, Stanley escapes the camp to look for Hector and finds him taking refuge under the remains of Sam's boat, subsisting on preserved jars of Kate Barlow's spiced peaches, which he calls "Sploosh". Hector refuses to go back to the camp. Stanley then notices a mountain in the distance that resembles a thumbs up sign, and recalls his great-grandfather claimed to find "refuge on God's thumb" after being stranded in the desert by Kate Barlow. They journey across the desert and up the mountain, where they discover a field of onions that was once Sam's. The boys eat the onions and find water by digging in the ground, and Stanley sings Madame Zeroni's song to Hector, breaking the family curse. Hector then reveals that he was the one who stole Clyde Livingston's shoes. Wondering if their meeting was destiny, Stanley asks Hector if he wants to help him dig one last hole.
They return to camp and dig in the hole where Stanley first found the lipstick tube, unearthing a suitcase and venomous lizards. The Warden and the staff appear and demand they hand it over, but retreat because of the lizards, which are passive to Stanley and Hector due to the onions they consumed. The Warden is revealed to be Trout Walker's granddaughter and she's been using the camp and the inmates to find Kate Barlow's stolen treasure. Stanley's attorney appears at the camp, explaining that Stanley has been exonerated. Hector reveals the suitcase belongs to the Yelnats family, stopping the Warden from taking it. Fearing that the Warden will kill Hector if they leave him behind, Stanley refuses to leave unless Hector can come along. The attorney asks for Hector's file, but the camp staff are naturally unable to find it, so Hector is also released. Stanley and Hector then say goodbye to the other campers, and as they drive away, the drought in Green Lake comes to an end.
The suitcase contains financial documents that are worth close to two million dollars, which is split evenly between Stanley and Hector. Stanley's family buys a new house and Hector hires a team of investigators to find his missing mother. Stanley's father also makes further money by inventing an antidote to foot odor, made from peaches and onions, and named "Sploosh", which is endorsed by Clyde Livingston. Meanwhile, Camp Green Lake is closed and sold to become a newly remodeled Girl Scouts' camp.
Setting.
Camp Green Lake is located on a dried-up lake in the U.S. state of Texas. The name is a false description, as the area is a parched, barren desert. The only weather is the scorching sun. No rain has fallen since the day Sam was murdered. The only plants mentioned are two oak trees in front of the Warden's cabin; the book notes that "the Warden owns the shade." The abandoned town of Green Lake is located by the side of the lakebed. Camp Green Lake is a juvenile detention center, where inmates spend most of their time digging holes. The majority of the book alternates between the present day story of Stanley Yelnats, the story of Elya Yelnats in Latvia (mid-1800s) and the story of Katherine Barlow in the town of Green Lake (about a generation later). Later chapters focus less on the past stories.
Themes.
Fairy tales.
The themes typical of a folk or fairy tale are present throughout the novel, notable in both Stanley and Elya's narratives. Elya must go on an adventure to win his love's approval and prove his own worth and he is eventually placed under a witch's curse. Stanley's bad luck is blamed on the curse left on his great-great-grandfather and the Yelnats family easily believes in the power of this curse. Both Stanley and Elya are similar to fairy tale characters and are morally good, heroic protagonists who must overcome the challenges predestined for them. Both story lines are accompanied by a magic that is seen in the mountain stream, Madame Zeroni's song, and the healing power of the onions. Each of these elements in "Holes" mirror elements frequently found in fairy tales.
Names.
Throughout the novel, names act as a theme that allows the characters to disassociate their lives at Camp Green Lake from their lives back in the real world. Names also demonstrate irony—Camp Green Lake is not actually a camp, it's located in a desert, and there is no lake. The "campers" all label themselves differently and identify with names such as Armpit and X-Ray and the guards are referred to as counselors. One of the counselors is referred to by the boys as "Mom", representing the absent parents at Camp Green Lake. Only the woman in charge is referred to in a prison-like way and is called "Warden". The different names allow the boys to bond and form a team based in their hatred for their work and the counselors. Many of the characters also have names that connect them to their family history, like the passing down of "Stanley Yelnats" and Zero's last name of Zeroni, and remind them how the actions of their ancestors affect their modern-day lives. Stanley is the fourth "Stanley Yelnats" in his family, a name that is passed down due to its palindromic nature and adds to the connection to family history.
Labor.
Labor is seen throughout the novel as the children are forced to dig holes while at Camp Green Lake. This theme is unusual in children's literature as many authors portray children as carefree and without responsibility. If they do engage in work, it is synonymous with play. Critic Maria Nikolajeva contends that "Holes" is set apart through the not just manual, but forced labor Stanley and the other campers do daily. This is first referenced at the beginning of the book when the purpose of the camp is stated: "If you take a bad boy and make him dig a hole every day in the hot sun, it will turn him into a good boy".
Reception.
"Holes" has received many accolades:
Over two decades after its original publication, "Holes" continues to be well received by critics and was ranked number 6 among all-time children's novels by "School Library Journal" in 2012.
Betsy Hearne of "The New York Times" applauded the novel's integration of mystery and humor that manages to keep "Holes" light and fresh, and she characterizes it as a "family read-aloud." Roger Sutton of "The Horn Book Magazine" called Sachar's declarative style effective, and argues that it helped make the novel more poignant. Sutton appreciated the positive ending and the suspense that leads the reader to it.
Film adaptation.
In 2003, Walt Disney Pictures released a film version of "Holes", which was directed by Andrew Davis and written by Louis Sachar.
Sequels.
Two companion novels have followed "Holes": "Stanley Yelnats' Survival Guide to Camp Green Lake" (2003) and "Small Steps" (2006).
"Stanley Yelnats's Survival Guide to Camp Green Lake".
As Louis Sachar states: "Should you ever find yourself at Camp Green Lake—or somewhere similar—this is the guide for you." Written from Stanley's point of view, the book offers advice on everything from scorpions, rattlesnakes, yellow-spotted lizards, etc.
"Small Steps".
In this sequel to "Holes", former inmate Armpit is now 17 and struggling with the challenges facing an African American teenager with a criminal history. A new friendship with Ginny, who has cerebral palsy, a reunion with former friend X-Ray, a ticket-scalping scheme, a beautiful pop singer, and a frame-up all test Armpit’s resolve to "Just take small steps and keep moving forward".