Holes

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1998

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

Download PDF

Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1, Chapters 1-3

Part 1, Chapters 4-6

Part 1, Chapters 7-12

Part 1, Chapters 13-19

Part 1, Chapters 20-24

Part 1, Chapters 25-28

Part 2, Chapters 29-35

Part 2, Chapters 36-43

Part 2, Chapter 44-Part 3, Chapter 50

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Book Club Questions

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Part 1, Chapters 7-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 1: “You Are Entering Camp Green Lake”

Part 1, Chapter 7 Summary

Chapter 7 toggles between Stanley’s first day digging a hole and the history of the curse placed on his family because of his great-great-grandfather.

On his first day out on the dry lake, Stanley struggles to dig his hole. His start is slow, and he gets blisters on his fingers quickly, making the digging painful. Everyone else can dig much faster than Stanley, and when Mr. Sir comes to fill up their water canteens, he warns Stanley to hurry up so that he isn’t digging during the hottest part of the day. Magnet tells Stanley that the first hole is the hardest. Soon after, Zero finishes his: “He looked down at his perfectly dug hole, spat in it, then turned and headed back to the camp compound” (37). One by one, the other boys finish and return while Stanley continues to struggle with his hole. When Stanley finally finishes, he feels a sense of pride.

Stanley’s great-great-grandfather Elya Yelnats is responsible for the curse on the Yelnats family. Elya wanted to marry Myra Menke, a beautiful girl in his village, but so did Igor Barkov, the pig farmer. Elya went to see Madame Zeroni about his problem. She tells him that Myra is silly and not a good choice for a wife. Despite her judgment, Madame Zeroni helps Elya by letting him take one of her new piglets. She tells him to carry the pig up the mountain every day to the stream there and to sing it a song. When it is Myra’s birthday, the pig will be bigger than any pig Igor Barkov has to offer. She also makes Elya promise to take her up to the mountain to drink from the stream and sing to her as well. She warns “that if he failed to do this, he and his descendants would be doomed for all of eternity” (31).

On the day when Myra’s father is to decide who she will marry, Elya and Igor both present fat pigs. Elya suggests that Myra should get to pick her husband since both pigs are adequate. Her father agrees. However, Myra struggles with the decision, which turns Elya off from the idea of her. He tells her to marry Igor and have the pig he brought as a wedding gift. Elya then sails to America as a shiphand, only realizing that he didn’t fulfill his promise to Madame Zeroni while already out at sea. In America, Elya marries Sarah Miller. After some bad luck, he tells her about Madame Zeroni’s curse and teaches her the song that he sang to the pig. They have their first child, Stanley, and Sarah sings the song to the baby.

Part 1, Chapter 8 Summary

Chapter 8 describes yellow-spotted lizards. The lizard likes to live in holes and “if you’ve ever been close enough to see the yellow spots, you are probably dead” (41).

Part 1, Chapter 9 Summary

Stanley showers after his hard day digging his first hole. He then goes to the Wreck Room where he almost gets in a fight with another boy who tripped him. X-Ray and Squid save him from nearly fighting with a kid who he thinks they are calling Caveman. X-Ray warns him that the second hole he digs will be the worst because he’s already hurting from the first one. Stanley starts writing a letter to his mother, lying about how he gets to go waterskiing, but stops when Zero begins reading it. Zero asks if the shoes Stanley was accused of stealing have red Xs on the back of them. When Stanley tells Zero that they did, Zero stares at him “with the same intensity with which he had been staring at the letter” (47). Armpit and Squid interrupt them. Stanley realizes the boys nicknamed him Caveman, and not the other boy, because they think he is tough.

Part 1, Chapter 10 Summary

On the second day of digging, Stanley finds a fish fossil. Even though the land is called a lake “it was still hard to believe that this dry wasteland was once full of water” (49). Stanley hides the fossil. He hopes that he won’t have to work the rest of the day since he was told that if he finds something interesting, he’ll get the day off. However, Mr. Pendanski tells him that it isn’t the sort of thing the Warden is looking for. The other boys find the fossil cool.

Part 1, Chapter 11 Summary

As the boys continue digging after their water break, X-Ray comes to Stanley’s hole and tells Stanley to give him anything he finds. Because X-Ray is the leader of the group, Stanley doesn’t “want to get on his bad side” (52). X-Ray tells Stanley that he has been at Camp Green Lake for almost a year and that it wouldn’t be fair if Stanley got to take a day off and X-Ray didn’t. Stanley agrees, believing that “if he was going to survive Camp Green Lake, it was far more important that X-Ray think he was a good guy than it was for him to get one day off” (53). Stanley is glad that they call him Caveman because it means that he is a part of their group. He thinks about how his school bully Derrick Dunne wouldn’t be able to bully him anymore if he had his friends from Camp Green Lake with him at school.

Part 1, Chapter 12 Summary

Stanley is the last boy to finish digging his hole again. When he walks back to camp, the other boys are sitting in a circle with Mr. Pendanski. Mr. Pendanski is encouraging the boys to think about what they want to do in the future when they leave Camp Green Lake. Some of the boys take it seriously, while others crack jokes about their dreams. Mr. Pendanski asks Stanley who is responsible for him being at Camp Green Lake and Stanley responds, “My no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather” (57). The boys laugh and it’s the first time Stanley sees Zero smile. Zero frowns again, however, when Mr. Pendanski tells Zero that even he has a future and isn’t worthless.

Part 1, Chapters 7-12 Analysis

Chapter 7 is the first of many historical flashbacks that occur in the story, revealing what happened before the novel’s present narration. In the flashback, the reader learns how the curse was put on Stanley’s family: Madame Zeroni rightfully cursed Elya for his selfishness. The Connection Between Past and the Present emphasizes that selfish and unjust actions have consequences, not just for the people involved but also for future generations. We will see this again when the town of Green Lake is responsible for a man’s murder, casting a blight upon the town.

The flashback of Elya’s cursing also introduces the song that Elya was supposed to sing to Madame Zeroni after he carried her to the mountaintop. The song and the history between Elya and Madame Zeroni play a key role in the plot later.

This section of the novel reveals more about the Group D boys and what Stanley was sent to do at Camp Green Lake. Although digging the holes is incredibly difficult for Stanley, he feels a sense of pride after finishing his first. Up to this point, Stanley has only been described as an unlucky kid who is bullied at school, but now we learn that Stanley can work hard and feel a sense of worth. This is the beginning of Stanley taking ownership of himself and feeling independent of his family and their history. While the reader begins to see Stanley’s sense of self, X-Ray reveals that he’s a manipulative leader who uses Stanley’s weaknesses against him. The reader already knows that Stanley was bullied in school, so when X-Ray tells Stanley to give him anything he finds, it makes sense that Stanley agrees. We also learn the significance of the name “Zero” when Mr. Pendanski tells him that he will amount to nothing.

Stanley is changing as a character. With his new nickname, Caveman, he feels strength and a sense of belonging with the other boys, though this belonging will prove fragile and inferior to the friendship he develops with Zero later in the novel.