Holes — Chapter 27

About This Passage

This short paragraph is one of the most physically painful moments in the book, and Sachar writes it without drama. Stanley has rationed a half-full canteen all morning in the open sun; he is offered a full one; and he finally pours the water out onto the desert because he trusts his reading of Mr. Sir more than he trusts his own thirst. Notice the sequence of verbs — 'unscrewed,' 'turned,' 'poured' — each one spelled out, each one costing something. Notice also the confession at the end: 'He was afraid that if he'd waited another second, he might have taken a drink.' The sentence admits how near the decision was to collapsing, which is what makes it brave. A heroic refusal that cost nothing would not be heroic. Copying this passage teaches a writer that the hardest moral choices are rarely accompanied by swelling music; they arrive as three simple verbs performed by a thirsty boy in a desert, at a cost the narrator does not try to hide.

Narration Prompt

Retell Chapter 27 in your own words, tracing the sequence from Stanley's rationed drinking, to Mr. Sir's three-day retaliation with the water, to Mr. Pendanski's quiet counter-kindness, to X-Ray's racially charged mockery, to Mr. Sir's suspicious filling of the canteen, to Stanley's decision to pour the water out, to the final revelation that Zero's real name is Hector Zeroni.

Discussion Questions

1. Sachar describes the scar on Mr. Sir's face as 'a jagged purple line running from below his eye to below his mouth, like a tattoo of a scar.' What is the effect of the word 'tattoo' in that simile, and what does it suggest about Mr. Sir's relationship to the humiliation the Warden has visited on him?
2. Mr. Sir's behavior with the canteen — the sudden smile, the disappearance into the truck cab, the invitation to 'drink up' — is never explicitly confirmed by the narrator as sabotage, but the chapter's construction leaves the reader nearly certain of it. What specific narrative techniques does Sachar use to deliver this certainty without ever having the narrator state the conclusion outright?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide