“HOLES” by Louis Sachar
PART ONE
YOU ARE ENTERING CAMP GREEN LAKE
Chapter 1:
This chapter describes the location of Camp Green Lake, explaining that
there is no longer a lake, merely a “dry, flat wasteland”. Campers are
mentioned: they are forbidden to lie in a hammock which stretches
between the only two trees to be seen in this barren area. The hammock –
and therefore the only shade – belongs to the Warden. Then the wildlife of
the area is described: rattlesnakes and scorpions, which are said to not
bother you if you don’t bother them. If a camper is stung by one of them, he
will not have to dig a hole on the lake for a day or two, but instead will get
to spend the time in his tent recovering. Then the yellow-spotted lizard is
described as deadly – if stung, “you will die a slow and painful death”.
On this rather ominous note, the chapter ends.
Chapter 2:
This is an exceptionally short chapter, asking “Why would anyone go to
Camp Green Lake?” We are told only bad boys are sent there, to dig a hole
every day in the hot sun, to turn him into a good boy. The main character,
Stanley Yelnats, is a poor boy who chose to come to Camp Green Lake
rather than go to jail.
Chapter 3:
Stanley is introduced to us more clearly in this chapter. His long journey to
the camp is described. He is expecting a lake and hoping to make friends.
It tells us he has no friends at school but is bullied because he is
overweight. We are also told that Stanley is innocent of the crime that he
committed: “he’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time”. All the
misfortune in his family is blamed on his great-great-grandfather, who stole
a pig from a gypsy and was cursed for it.
Then we hear a little about Stanley’s father who is an inventor - but not a
successful one. Only one ancestor was ever rich: but his fortune has been
stolen from him by the outlaw Kissin Kate Barlow. So even he had been
cursed.
The journey ends and Stanley looks at Camp Green Lake for the first time.
Chapter 4
Stanley looks around as he steps off the bus. Everything is very dry and
hot. He is led into a building and meets Mr Sir, a man in a cowboy hat and
shades, who eats sunflower seeds all the time. He makes Stanley undress
before he gives him his orange uniform. Then he tells Stanley the rules
“You are to dig one hole each day, including Saturdays and Sundays. Each
hole must be five feet deep, and five feet across in every direction.” Then
he shows Stanley that there are no watch towers and no fences, but warns
him there is no water for one hundred miles anywhere around them: so
escaping is very stupid.
Chapter 5
Stanley is assigned to a tent with six other boys and meets his counselor,
Mr Pendanski. He tells Stanley the main thing he should remember is to not
upset the Warden, then introduces the rest of the boys. They all have nicknames like X-Ray, Zero, Armpit and Zig-Zag. When Stanley is left alone with
the boys and calls one of them by their real name, he is pushed to the
ground. At the end of the chapter he is feeling intimidated and confused.
Chapter 6
Stanley has a four minute cold shower then dinner of some kind of meat
and vegetables. He is asked by the boys what his crime was: he tells them
he stole a pair of sneakers, which had belonged to Clyde “Sweet Feet”
Livingstone, a famous baseball player. The story of what happened is told:
Stanley had been walking home from school when the sneakers had fallen
from the sky on top of his head. Stanley had thought that this was some
kind of sign from God and had run home to show his dad, who was trying to
invent something out of old trainers. On the way home, he has been
arrested, as the shoes had actually been stolen from a charity auction for
homeless people. As Stanley was a fan of “Sweet Feet”, the judge believed
Stanley had stolen the trainers as a souvenir of his hero. So Stanley had
ended up at Camp Green Lake.
Chapter 7
This chapter describes both Stanley’s first day of digging and how his
great-great grandfather came to be cursed.
Stanley finds the digging very tricky: he even has trouble getting his spade
into the ground. Soon his hands are covered in blisters and he is the very
last boy to finish his hole: Mr Pendanski comes looking for Stanley,
believing he has fainted. But Stanley spits in his hole and walks back to the
camp, tired but proud of his achievement.
Stanley’s great-great grandfather came from Latvia, and came to be cursed
because he entered a pact with a wise, Egyptian woman, Madame Zeroni,
so she would help him to win the hand in marriage of a local girl, Myra. As
part of the pact, Elya Yelnats was supposed to carry the old woman up a
mountain to drink from a special stream. However, after Elya decided he
did not want to marry Myra after all, he forgot his part of the deal, and took
a job on board a ship to America. Since then, the Yelnats family has always
been dogged with bad luck.
Chapter 8
In this short chapter, the deadly yellow- spotted lizard is described: we
know that this lizard will be significant later on in the novel, as it has been
given a chapter all to itself.
Chapter 9
Stanley showers when he returns to camp, then heads to the “Wreck
Room”. Stanley trips over an outstretched leg, which belongs to a large,
tough looking boy. X-Ray and Armpit guide Stanley out of trouble and they
discuss the hole Stanley has dug, the boys warning him that the second
hole is the hardest. Stanley writes home, not telling his mum the truth to
spare her the worry. Zero asks about the shoes Stanley allegedly stole and
comes across to Stanley as a strange boy, then it is time to dinner. Stanley
has a nick-name now: he is Caveman.
Chapter 10
Stanley starts his second hole, and thinks he has found a miracle when he
comes across a fossil. He believes he will get the rest of the day off, for
finding something interesting. However, Mr Pendanski laughs at it: “The
Warden isn’t interested in fossils”. The other boys all want to see it, but
Stanley has to keep digging.
Chapter 11
X-Ray suggests to Stanley that if Stanley finds anything interesting, that he
should give it to X-Ray, who has been there for almost a year and deserves
a day off. Stanley decided this is okay, and then thinks of the dynamics of
the group. X-Ray is clearly the leader though he’s almost as small as Zero.
Then he thinks of some of these boys standing up to the bully who made
Stanley’s school life hell, and this makes him feel better, taking his mind of
the digging.
Chapter 12
In this chapter, Stanley returns to the camp to find a counselling session
going on with Mr Pendanski. He is encouraging the boys to think about
what they would like to do when they are released from the Camp. He tells
Stanley that there is only one person responsible for him being in the
Camp, and when Stanley complains that that is his is great-great
grandfather, everyone laughs, and even Zero smiles. Mr Pendanski reminds
him that it is actually Stanley himself who is responsible for his situation.
Then he asks Zero what he wants to do with his life. Zero tells him that he
likes to dig holes.
Chapter 13
Stanley digs hole after hole and soon a fortnight has passed. Then he finds
a slim gold tube, open at one end and closed at the other, with the initials
KB with a heart around them on the closed end. Stanley isn’t sure what to
do with it: he thinks he wants to keep it to show to the warden secretly.
However, he is seen with it and decides he has to take it to X-Ray like he
promised. He suggests to X-Ray that he keeps it till the next morning, so he
can have almost the whole day off, and as a reward, he finds the boys have
moved him one place up the queue for water.
Chapter 14
The next day, X-Ray waits for the water truck to arrive before “finding” the
gold tube and showing it to Mr Pendanski. Mr Pendanski thinks the Warden
will be very interested in it and comes back with her in his truck shortly
afterwards. She says that X-Ray will get a double shower, clean clothes
and the rest of the day off, and insists everyone gets their water bottles
refilled. When Mr Pendanski tells her they have just been filled, she
becomes angry and threatens that Mr Pendanski will be digging if he does
not carry out her orders. She is clearly a hostile and demanding person.
Surprisingly, she seems to know all the boys’ names and nicknames, even
Stanley’s even though he has never met her before.
Chapter 15
After a run in with the warden, Mr Pendanski fills the water canteens again
and then the boys set to work again, but this time concentrating on the
holes nearest X-Ray’s supposed find. Two boys dig while the other two sift
through the dirt before barrowing it away from the site. Stanley finds
barrowing the dirt a lot easier than digging. The warden sticks around all
day, and seems very excited and on edge. The boys tell Stanley that she
knows all their names and knows what they’re up to because she has
microphones and cameras all around the camp, although Stanley doubts
that. Stanley also concludes that instead of merely digging to build
character, they have been set this task to find something and the warden
thinks they’re pretty close to finding it. Stanley memorises the hole where
he actually found the gold tube.
Chapter 16
The next day, the warden is beginning to lose patience with the futile
digging and snarls at everyone to make them dig faster. The group digs
longer than any other group on the lake. Stanley receives a letter from him
mum later that day and feels a bit irritated when he realises that Zero is
looking at the letter over his shoulder. Stanley then explains that his mum
has made a joke about the little old lady who lived in a shoe. It is at this
point that Stanley realises that Zero does not know any nursery rhymes.
Chapter 17
The boys continue to dig round about X-Ray’s hole and eventually all the
holes round about form one massive hole. The warden is becoming more
and more frustrated and when she challenges Armpit about him having
been away for a toilet break, she goes a little too far, pokes him in the
chest with a pitchfork and draws blood. At the end of the day, Stanley is hit
by Zigzag’s shovel and has to be patched up by Mr Sir. When he returns, he
finds Zigzag won’t shovel any more dirt until Stanley has moved his
dropped dirt off his spot, showing that Zigzag is going a little crazy too.
Chapter 18
The next day they go back to digging their own holes in another area. Apart
from his head where he had been hurt, Stanley’s body no longer aches. He
has also speeded up, and now finishes his hole less than 30 minutes after
Magnet. Later he writes some more lies to his parents and again finds Zero
watching over his shoulder. Zero then tells Stanley he can’t read or write
and wants Stanley to teach him. Stanley refuses.
Chapter 19
Stanley hears Squid crying one night but in the morning Squid refuses to
discuss it. Stanley finds he is still quite scared of the boys. During a water
break, Magnet steals Mr Sir’s sack of sunflower seeds and passes them
round. Stanley takes some to be polite but drops the bag, seconds before
Mr Sir returns to find them. Mr Sir sees the half hidden bag in Stanley’s
hole. Stanley tells him that he stole the seeds from the truck and as a
result he is taken off to see the warden.
Chapter 20
Stanley is dreading seeing the warden and fears a serious punishment.
However, the warden seems very calm, until she takes out a bottle of nail
polish which contains deadly rattlesnake venom. She procedes to paint her
nails then runs her wet nails down Stanley’s face, just touching his wound.
The pain is sharp. Then she turns on Mr Sir for wasting her time, slapping
him on the cheek, breaking the skin and letting some of the poison touch
his open wounds. Within seconds he is on the ground writhing in agony.
Chapter 21
Stanley walks back to the hole and thinks of his great-grandfather who was
robbed by Kissin’ Kate Barlow and left stranded in the desert for seventeen
days. Delirious when he was found, he muttered he had survived because
of God’s thumb, which was put down to the ravings of a half mad man.
Stanley then sees a rattlesnake, which rattled to warn him away. When
Stanley gets back to the others, he finds his hole has been nearly
completely dug, not by the boys whom he could have blamed for the seeds
being stolen, but by Zero.
Chapter 22
Stanley is grateful that Zero has dug his hole but does not really
understand why. Later he decides he will teach him to read and starts to
teach him the alphabet. He discovers Zero is a whizz with numbers. Zero
also agrees he will dig part of Stanley’s hole each day too. In bed that
night, thinking over the situation, it occurs to him that he has seen the gold
tube before: in his bathroom at home. It is half a lipstick container. He
thinks too that KB could stand for Kate Barlow, the kissin’ outlaw.
Chapter 23
This chapter features the story of Miss Katherine Barlow, who lived in
Green Lake one hundred years before, when it was a thriving town on the
lake-side. She was the school teacher and a very popular person. One man,
Trout Walker,the son of the local landowner, wanted to marry Miss
Katherine but he was a horrible person and she refused him.
Chapter 24
Mr Sir has huge grazes on his swollen face, and attacks a boy who remarks
on the state of it. Back on the lake bed, Stanley will not talk about what
happened at the warden’s house. As punishment for what has happened to
Mr Sir, he is deliberately not filling Stanley’s water bottle.
Chapter 25
The story returns to Green Lake one hundred years ago. Sam, the onion
seller, a black man, is a popular figure who claims his onions can cure all
sorts of illnesses and complaints. He claims his donkey. Mary Lou, only
eats onions and is fifty years old. Sam starts to fix up Miss Katherine’s
schoolhouse in exchange for her famous spiced peaches, and gradually
they fall in love. At the end of the chapter, they are seen kissing.
Chapter 26
The word spread quickly that Miss Katherine had been kissed by a black
man, and a mob gathered to capture Sam. Sam faced the death penalty for
kissing a white woman and Katherine is incensed by the sheriff, who states
he will allow Sam to live if Katherine kisses him. She runs off to find Sam
and they escape in his small rowing boat. However, Trout catches up with
the boat, Sam is shot and against her will, Katherine is saved from
drowning. Sam’s donkey has also been shot. No rain has fallen in Green
Lake since then, and three days after the shooting, Katherine Barlow shot
then kissed the sheriff. She was the most feared outlaw in the area for the
next twenty years.
Chapter 27
Zero is digging part of Stanley’s hole each day because Stanley is teaching
him to read and write. Mr Sir is still depriving Stanley of water: or
sometimes putting in something disgusting that Stanley won’t drink! At the
end of the chapter, Zero learns how to spell his name, and tells Stanley his
proper name is Hector Zeroni.
Chapter 28
After twenty years as an outlaw, Kate Barlow returned to the ghost town
that was now Green Lake. One day, Trout and his wife appear and insist
that Kate tells them where she has buried all of her loot – the money she
has stolen over the years. She refuses to tell them, gets bitten by a yellowspotted lizard and dies after telling them to “Start digging”.
PART TWO
The Last Hole
Chapter 29
Stanley looks over upwards the mountains that they can sometimes see in
the distance. He becomes more and more convinced that one part of the
mountain looks like a thumb sticking up from a fist: God’s thumb?
Chapter 30
In this chapter, it is Zigzag’s birthday and he and the other boys start to
have a go at Stanley because he gets to sit around, while Zero digs for him.
Stanley has explained the deal they have, but finds himself in trouble when
Zigzag starts to fight with him. Mr Pendanski tries to sort it out but more
and more boys join in and eventually he has to fire a shot into the air to call
for assistance. The warden appears too. The situation is explained to her,
and she forbids Zero to dig for Stanley and she forbids Stanley to teach
Zero. Zero reacts badly, and smashes his shovel across Mr Pendanski’s
face and runs off into the distance. He has no water with him and the
warden expects that he will be back in no time.
Chapter 31
Stanley has to dig his and Zero’s hole that day. He keeps thinking that he
should go after Zero, but knows that it would be madness to do so. The
next day, Zero is still missing and the warden declares that since Zero has
no family, they should just destroy his records… “No one cares about
Hector Zeroni”.
Chapter 32
Stanley decides he has to go and find Zero, even though he knows he will
most likely be dead. He steals the pick-up during a water break, but drives
it straight into a hole! Then he starts running, realising as he does so that
his water canteen is empty and he too is out in this desert without any
water.
Chapter 33
Stanley walks and walks knowing that eventually he will have to turn and
head back. No one is following him.
Chapter 34
Stanley sees an object on the lake and decides to turn away from the
mountains (where he’s planning to walk to) to see what it is. It is the
upturned hull of a very old boat, called the Mary Lou. There is a tunnel
underneath it: and out of the tunnel, comes a hand – Zero’s hand!
Chapter 35
Zero is very weak but has been surviving on ancient bottles of spiced
peaches, which he calls Sploosh. It is refreshing but has given Zero severe
stomach pains, which Stanley only discovers after he has drunk some from
the last bottle. Zero refuses to go back to camp. Stanley points out the
strange point of the mountain and Zero agrees it looks like a thumb.
Chapter 36
The two boys start to walk towards Big Thumb, Zero occasionally stopping
with stomach cramps. They speculate about who Mary Lou was, then Zero
asks for some spellings to keep his mind off his pain. They climb out of the
lake bed with difficulty, and soon after find themselves walking in the
shadow of the mountain.
Chapter 37
Stanley realises in this chapter that there are weeds growing on the
mountain, so there must be water. However, Zero collapse at the end of the
chapter, exhausted and in agony.
Chapter 38
Stanley decides to leave the shovel and jars there, picks up Zero and
carries him the rest of the way up the mountain to the base of the Big
Thumb rock. There he finds a muddy puddle and scrapes some water out of
it for Zero. Then he finds an onion, eats half then offers the rest to Zero,
who is so weak he can barely swallow and can only whisper.
Chapter 39
Stanley and Zero slowly rest in the shadow of big thumb rock. Zero is still
very ill but he manages to confess to Stanley that he is responsible for
stealing the shoes that Stanley was accused if stealing! Zero drifts off to
sleep as Stanley sings him the “If Only” song.
Chapter 40
Stanley discovers there are loads of onions growing in the area around
them. There is a flashback to one hundred years ago, when the onions sold
by Sam had apparently cured a little girl of food poisoning. Stanley and
Zero slowly regain some strength, eating the onions and drinking the
muddy water. Stanley decides to go back down the mountain to recover the
shovel so he can dig out the water hole properly. He finds it and the jars
surprisingly far down the mountain, and he can barely believe that he
carried Zero the rest of the way up from there.
Chapter 41
Zero improves and tells Stanley the story of how he came to steal Clyde
Livingstone’s shoes. Living on the street, he had always just taken what he
needed…including the trainers from the display in the homeless shelter. He
escaped with them, but then took them off and left them on the roof of a
car. The next day, he was arrested for stealing another pair from a shop.
Chapter 42
Zero helps dig the water hole and they speculate about how many onions
they must have eaten. Stanley thinks how happy he is, despite the fact that
it is all Zero’s fault he is there, then he comes up with a mad plan, to find
the buried treasure on the lake bed before Zero and he finally escape from
the camp.
Chapter 43
Zero talks a bit more about his mum and when they became homeless, then
they set off back to camp with water and onions. Neither one of them
wants to take a drink first, as they both seem to think it would be a sign of
weakness. Then Zero tells Stanley about the time that his mum left him in
a park and never came back for him. They reach the Mary Lou, initially
start in the wrong direction, then rectify their mistake, arriving back at the
camp long before nightfall. They find the right hole, and wait in adjacent
holes till it is dark.
Chapter 44
When the camp is sleeping, Stanley starts digging. Zero fetches more
water and cereal from the camp. Stanley digs and digs, eventually finding a
suitcase. It is a struggle to dislodge, but they eventually succeed and as
Stanley heaves the heavy case to the surface, they find the Warden
standing waiting for them.
Chapter 45
The Warden, Mr Sir and Mr Pendanski are ready to take the case off the
boys when they spot a deadly yellow spotted lizard on the suitcase. Then
another appears, then a third. The hole contains a lizard nest and they are
crawling all over the boys. The warden tells everyone that it is just a
matter of time…meaning soon the boys will be dead, and she will have the
case.
Chapter 46
The lizards do not bite the boys and the Warden starts to become
impatient. She already has a story planned that she will tell Stanley’s
mother that Stanley ran away, fell into a hole and was bitten by a lizard.
What is ironic is that Stanley’s lawyer had been to the camp the day before
to tell Stanley he was to be freed…Stanley cannot take in the words, as he
is concentrating on happy memories in what he thinks are the last few
minutes of his life.
Chapter 47
As the sun comes up, the lizards move down the hole into the shade but
they are still on the boys’ clothing. Two more people arrive at the scene:
Stanley’s lawyer and a tall man who turns out to be the Attorney General.
Stanley does not know how his parents could afford a lawyer, but she is
there to release him form the camp, bringing with her all the paperwork the
Warden had insisted on the day before and the A.G. for authentication.
Stanley takes his life in his hands and moves out of the hole: the lizards
drop off him and scurry into the shade. Then the final miracle of the day
occurs: the name on the suitcase, which the warden had said was stolen
from her cabin, reads “Stanley Yelnats”.
Chapter 48
The warden wants Stanley to open his case, but his lawyer tells him to do
nothing. They prepare to leave, but Stanley states he won’t leave Zero:
“They’ll kill him”. The A.G. wants to see his files, which of course are
mysteriously “misplaced”. Nor are any files available on the computer. So
Zero is released along with Stanley. The other boys appear and wish
Stanley well.
Chapter 49
One hundred years ago, the yellow spotted lizards lived only in the desert
hills. Sam sold special onion juice to anyone who went hunting in that area,
because the lizards would not bite anyone who had onion juice in their
bloodstream: the onions therefore saved Zero and Stanley.
Stanley’s lawyer, Ms Morengo, tells Stanley his father has invented a cure
for foot odour, and she is his patent lawyer. The product smells of peaches.
She discovered Stanley was still in school at the time the sneakers were
stolen and therefore proved Stanley innocent. As the boys leave Camp
Green Lake, the rain starts to fall there for the first time in 100 years.
Part 3
Filling in the Holes
Chapter 50
This chapter ties up all the loose ends. Stanley’s family is finally free of the
curse bestowed upon his great-great-grandfather, after Stanley carried the
great-great-great-grandson of Madame Zeroni up the mountain.
Camp Green Lake was closed down, sold and became a Girl Scout camp.
The suitcase contained jewels - worth around $20,000 – and a lot of stock
certificates, deeds of trust and other papers. They were worth a small
fortune: Stanley and Zero gained just under a million dollars each. Stanley
buys a new house for his family and Zero hires private investigators to find
his mum.
At the end of the novel, it is a year and a half later and everyone is at
Stanley’s house watching the Superbowl: Clyde Livingstone is there too,
and everyone watches as he appears in a commercial for Stanley’s dad’s
foot odour treatment – called Sploosh! Also there is Zero’s mum, looking a
bit weary but with a great smile just like Zero’s. She sings a song, the “If
Only” song but with more hopeful and positive words, ending “Fly high, my
baby bird, my angel, my only”.