Adolescent Literature

 Holes: Stanley's Character Metamorphosis

     I read Holes by Louis Sachar for the first time June 27, 2022 while my family and I were driving back from a trip to California. I remember thinking that I had better get started on it because my class had started that week. From the first page I was hooked. Sachar manages to put a story together that, not only is entertaining, but easy to read without making you feel like your reading below your level. The main protagonist of the story is Stanley Yelnats IV who is beset with bad luck...or so he believes. He is sent to Camp Green Lake for a crime he did not commit, except that he learns Camp Green Lake is nothing but "dry, flat wasteland" (p. 11). While he is here, Stanley goes through a metamorphosis which takes him from an overweight, soft, dreamy boy and turns him into a fit, hardened, practical young man.

    The scene opens up with Stanley on a bus heading toward Camp Green Lake. Not knowing anything about the place, he imagines that he will be attending a type of camp where "he'd make some friends...[or] swim in the lake" (p. 14). He is used to playing making believe because his family is poor which kept him from ever going anywhere, so that is exactly what Stanley did here...he pretended "he was going to Camp Fun and Games" (p. 14). Unfortunately, Stanley is in for a rude awakening. Stanley Yelnats is not in Kansas anymore!

    Stanley was an overweight boy who had no friends. He was continually harassed by students and teachers alike, yet never stood up for himself. His one consolation was that he was able to laugh at himself and blame his bad luck on "his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather" (p. 15). Maybe it was his ability to see the positive or maybe it was just that he expected bad things to happen, so he wasn't disappointed when it did so that it helped him get through the tough times. We see glimpses of what Stanley is made of on his bus ride out to the camp. 

    Even though the bus ride took eight hours, Stanley never complained. He stoically kept his thoughts to himself. That is indicative of a strong resolution. He also grins at the state he is in because of his ability to blame it all on the family's bad luck. Instead of just lamenting his fate, he actually "felt a little sorry for the guard and the bus driver" (p. 19) for having to travel back another eight hours.

    After meeting Mr. Sir, the right-hand man to the Warden, Stanley meets Mr. Pendanski, his camp counselor. Stanley doesn't appear to be frightened of his circumstances, instead, he does his best to figure how everything, including people, works. When told by Mr. Pendanski that although he had made some wrong choices, he wasn't "a bad kid" (p. 22), Stanley was wise enough to just agree.

    Stanley is told that the only requirement was for him, and all the other boys, to dig a hole in the dry bed of the lake. The hole had to be the length and width of the shovel he would be using. According to Annette Wannamaker, author of an article titled, "Reading in the Gaps and Lacks: (De)Constructing Masculinity in Louis Sachar's Holes," this "story...involves conforming to stereotypical constructs of masculinity, which require the boy to endure grueling physical trials and which require him to negate the feminine in order to become masculine" (p. 18). Stanley had "soft, fleshy hands" (30) but it wasn't long before "[h]is skin had gotten tougher" (55). His body was not as soft for it his "muscles had strengthened, and his hands were tough and callused" (72). Not only was he changing physically, but Stanley was changing in other ways..."his heart had hardened as well" (p. 73). 

    Stanley goes from a boy who really did care about the way he treated others, to someone who carelessly set aside the feelings of another boy in the camp. Zero (Hector Zeroni) was a quiet, young man to whom Mr. Pendanski referred to as someone with "nothing inside his head" (p. 24). When Zero asks Stanley to teach him how to read, Stanley brushes him off with an excuse about him being too tired, he "needed to save his energy for the people who counted" (p. 73). Luckily, Stanley has a change of heart and agrees to teach Zero how to read in exchange for Zero helping him dig.

    Stanley has something else on his side, his intelligence. He learns why they are digging holes, it is actually an excavation to find the lost treasure of a famous outlaw, Kissing Kate Barlow. Through a quirk of fate, Stanley unearths a cap to a tube of lipstick which causes the Warden to go into a frenzy of having the boys dig in a specific location. Unbeknownst to her, Stanley had given the cap to X-Ray due to an earlier agreement. So, the Warden thought the artifact had come from X-Ray's hole. Of course, nothing more was found, so the boys were told to resume their normal digging. but Stanley remembered the hole he had been digging in when he found it, "d[igging] the hole into his memory" (p. 65).

    I believe the real metamorphoses comes when Stanley steals Mr. Sir's truck in an effort to find Zero, who had previously run off after smacking Mr. Pendanski with a shovel. After putting the truck in a hole, Stanley takes off on foot in search of Zero. He finds him sheltered out of the sun under a beat up old boat with the name Mary Lou on the side. Zero has a stomach ache due to eating some canned peaches which were over a hundred years old. They, of course, did not know that bit of information. Stanley knew they had to find some water if they were to survive. He remembered that his great-grandfather had been stranded out there after he was robbed by Kissing Kate Barlow and his survival was due to taking "refuge on God's thumb" (p. 108). Stanley decided to head there with Zero. 

    Stanley ended up carrying Zero up the mountain, which inadvertently removed a curse upon the Yelnats by Zero's great-great-great-grandmother. They made it to the Thumb and, after some digging, found water. Stanley also found some onions which turned out to be a deterrent to the yellow-spotted lizard, which has a bite that will cause "a slow and painful death" (p. 12). The boys survive and get their strength back before making the long trek back to the camp. It was while they were sleeping on the mountain that Stanley realized "he liked himself now" (p. 154).

    They manage to sneak their way to hole where Stanley first found the lipstick cap and with the help of Zero, they find a suitcase. The Warden, Mr. Sir, and Mr. Polanski discover them and try to take the suitcase away but are unable to because of the many lizards that are on the boys. They never get bit by the lizards because of all the onions they had previously eaten, for "lizards don't like onion blood" (184). The boys are rescued by Stanley's lawyer and the Texas Attorney General. 

    The suitcase, Zero pointed out, belonged to Stanley Yelnats as indicated by the name on the suitcase, which no one else had noticed. There was fortune inside which half went to Zero, or Hector Zeroni. Stanley refused to leave Hector behind, so his lawyer had no choice but to take him as well. Stanley had arrived...he knew he was a better person for having gone to Camp Green Lake.

References

Sachar, Louis (1998). Holes. Random House.

Wannamaker, A. (2006). Reading in the gaps and lacks: (de)constructing masculinity in Louis Sachar’s holes. Children's Literature in Education, 37(1), 15–33. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10583-005-9452-4