Holes — Chapter 36

Narration Prompt

Summarize Chapter 36 as a coherent narrative unit — from the boys' departure from the Mary Lou, through the desert crossing with Zero's attacks and the spelling lessons, through Stanley's meditation on his parents, up the cliff, to the sun on Big Thumb. Note where Sachar pauses for interior reflection and where he lets the body's progress carry the prose.

Discussion Questions

1. Zero's 'only way you can go is up' is a line that a camp counselor could say as a joke, a homeless boy could say as autobiography, and a mystic could say as metaphysics. Sachar writes the line so that all three registers remain live at once. What does the novel gain from the line's refusal to settle into one of them?
2. Stanley's mid-crossing meditation — that his parents' not-knowing would be a longer suffering than his own death — is the clearest window the novel gives us into Stanley's moral interior. Trace the logic: is he making a claim about time, about love, about himself, or about all three? And where does this leave him in relation to his own life?

+ 2 more questions in the complete study guide