HOLES
|
Author: Louis
Sachar Published
in: August 1998 Main
Characters: Stanley, Zero, Warden, Kate Barlow, Sam the onion seller. |
|
Synopsis: This story began
with a young boy named Stanley Yelnats. Unfortunately, due to his bad luck,
Stanley found himself stuck in Camp Green Lake, a juvenile detention camp.
Whenever something went wrong, the Yelnats family would always blame
everything on Stanley’s
no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather. At this detention
camp, the boys were forced to dig large holes in the dry, cracked dirt in the
blazing hot sun every day. Once the holes had reached to the Warden’s
satisfaction, then and only then were the boys allowed to rest. After some
investigation, Stanley had realised that the Warden was not making the boys
dig to ‘toughen them up for life’. He realised that the Warden was looking
for something very valuable and precious that was hidden in the vast land of
dirt. When he was a boy, Stanley's
great-great-grandfather, Elya Yelnats, received a pig from Madame Zeroni, a
gypsy, in exchange for a promise. Elya's promise was that, after the pig grew
strong, he would carry Madame Zeroni, who only had one leg, up a mountain and
sing her a song that she had taught him. After becoming disillusioned with
the girl he thought he loved, however, Elya hops a boat to America,
forgetting his promise to Madame Zeroni. Elya marries and has a child in
America and always thinks about Madame Zeroni, who he believes has cursed him
because of his failure to fulfil his promise. He knows that Madame Zeroni's
son lives in America, but Elya never finds him. One hundred and ten years before Stanley had
arrived at Camp Green Lake, the town of Green Lake was a beautiful place
where peach trees bloomed throughout the spring. In this Texas town, the schoolteacher,
Katherine Barlow, fell in love with Sam, the onion seller. Sam sold onions to
eat and to use for medicinal purposes. While Katherine and Sam were alive,
racism was common in the United States and it was against the law for a black
man to love a white woman. Because Sam was black and Katherine was white, the
people in the town became irate when they find that Katherine and Sam had
fallen in love. Charles, or Trout, Walker, the richest man in town had always
wanted to marry Katherine. He was already mad that Katherine did not wish to
go out with him so when he found out that she was in love with Sam he
gathered the townspeople to burn the schoolhouse and attack Sam. Katherine
seeked help from the local sheriff but instead finds that the sheriff, who made
advances towards her, also wanted to kill Sam. Katherine and Sam attempt to
escape but their boat was destroyed while only half way across the lake and
Sam was killed. Katherine was driven mad by her grief and became an outlaw
known as Kissin' Kate Barlow. Her name referred to the fact that she kissed
the men she killed, leaving a lipstick imprint of her lips on their faces. In
her twenty years of robbing people in the west, she happened to rob Stanley's
great- grandfather while he was on his way from New York to California. She
buried Stanley's great-grandfather's money somewhere and even though Charles
Walker and his wife Linda tried to torture her into revealing its location,
Kate died before anyone could find out where the money was hidden. After the
day that Sam was killed, rain stopped falling on Green Lake and the lake dried
up. As the lake had all been dried up, the citizens
of Green Lake had all ran away due to infertile land and harsh conditions.
One day, as Stanley was digging his hole, he found a small tube of lipstick
with KB drawn on the inside. Stanley quickly realised that the Warden had
been very interested with this minute artefact. Could this be what she was
looking for all this time? Stanley makes friends with the other boys at
camp, and joins in with the nicknames that they had for each other. But there
was one boy who nobody talked to, named Zero. This was his name as he neither
spoke, nor showed any interest in others. Stanley quickly makes friends with
Zero and taught him many things. Zero was actually the great-great-great grandson
of Madame Zeroni, although no one knows. Eventually,
Zero ran away from camp and Stanley desperately followed him. They helped
each other climb a hill which turned out to be Sam’s old onion field. As Zero
was very weak, Stanley carried him up the mountain. They both planned to go
back to the camp and search for Kate Barlow’s treasure. Zero and Stanley dig
up a rusty suitcase and the Warden attempts to take it from them… What was
inside the suitcase? How did Zero have
any relation to this story? Why did Stanley come to this camp and what was
the background of the story? Open this heroic tale to find the plot twist!
|
|
Why I like
this book:
I really enjoyed reading this book because it
shows that you can be anyone to be a hero. Stanley was very cautious of his
surroundings and found the horrific truth about the Warden and camp green
lake. This story has an abrupt ending, but it is still mysterious. You should
try it!
|
Comments
Post a Comment