Holes — Chapter 25

About This Passage

This paragraph is the quiet engine of the whole Kate Barlow backstory. The chapter's romance is not sparked by a grand declaration but by the discovery that a man the town has reduced to 'the onion man' has already memorized the poems she teaches. Sachar's architecture is careful: the reader receives the information in the exact order Miss Katherine does — first Sam's 'interest in poetry' (a surprise), then the fact that he can finish Poe and Longfellow from memory (a revelation), and only 'on more than one occasion' (a pattern, confirmed). The passage is a study in how recognition across social prohibition happens in small instalments rather than a single flash. Copying this paragraph trains the writer to notice how Sachar uses the word 'surprised' as a marker for the moment a prejudice begins to dissolve, and how the casual phrase 'on more than one occasion' does the work a lesser writer would have done with an exclamation.

Narration Prompt

In an oral or written retelling of 4-5 minutes, reconstruct Chapter 25 from the opening description of Sam and Doc Hawthorn as parallel physicians of Green Lake, through the four schoolhouse repairs, to the kiss in the rain and Hattie Parker's whispered curse. Pay particular attention to Sachar's use of repetition ('I can fix that' five times), to the single line 'Sam wasn't allowed to attend classes because he was a Negro, but they let him fix the building,' and to the way the chapter's final sentence redirects our attention from the two lovers to an unseen witness.

Discussion Questions

1. Sachar opens Chapter 25 by placing Sam the onion man alongside Doc Hawthorn as parallel physicians of Green Lake — one with real medicine, one with onion ointments — and tells us Doc Hawthorn 'did not resent Sam.' Why does the narrator begin this way, and what does the doctor's lack of resentment allow us to see about the town's moral character that the rest of the chapter will slowly withdraw?
2. The sentence 'Sam wasn't allowed to attend classes because he was a Negro, but they let him fix the building' uses a single conjunction — 'but' — to join a prohibition and a permission. What is the rhetorical effect of the 'but,' and why does Sachar refuse to soften this sentence by separating the two facts into two sentences or by adding any commentary of his own?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide