Holes — Chapter 35

About This Passage

This passage delivers one of the novel's quietest and most devastating revelations: Barf Bag stepped on the rattlesnake deliberately, preparing first by removing his shoe and sock, to escape the camp any way he could. Sachar places this information inside casual dialogue rather than dramatizing it as a set-piece — the smaller the announcement, the larger its moral weight. The word 'first' is the sentence's hinge: it implies step-by-step calculation, which in turn implies a boy who had thought the choice through. Stanley's shiver is the reader's shiver transcribed.

Narration Prompt

Retell Chapter 35 as a sequence of restorations: what is restored under the Mary Lou (food, friendship, shelter, cool air), what is restored outside the boat (reading, landmark, direction), and what is newly revealed that had been hidden (Barf Bag's true escape method, Zero's refusal to return). End by articulating how these restorations and revelations prepare the next move in the story.

Discussion Questions

1. Sachar's opening simile compares Zero's face to 'a jack-o'-lantern that had been left out too many days past Halloween — half rotten, with sunken eyes and a drooping smile.' Why does the author choose an image borrowed from a children's holiday to describe the near-death of a boy? What work does the familiarity of the image do that a strictly medical description could not?
2. Zero answers Stanley's 'You'll die out here' with 'Then I'll die out here.' The echo is total — every word Stanley uses, Zero returns. Sachar could have written a longer refusal. Why do you think he chooses the echoing short reply, and what does it tell us about Zero's moral position that he refuses both Stanley's plan and Stanley's longer form of speech?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide