Holes — Chapter 38

About This Passage

This passage is Sachar's theology of the gift. Stanley has found an onion in the mud and eats half; the juice's felt trajectory through the body — mouth to eyes to throat to stomach — is given with the austerity that characterizes the novel's most important moments. Imitating Sachar here trains the student in the discipline of registering sensation as anatomical fact rather than as metaphor.

Narration Prompt

Narrate Chapter 38 with a focus on structural inversion: the strength sourced from inside and outside, the landmark that fails to be itself, the fall that becomes a rescue, and the onion that becomes a promise kept. What philosophical architecture is Sachar building?

Discussion Questions

1. Sachar figures Big Thumb as a 'giant magnet' — Stanley's strength arrives both from 'deep inside himself' and from 'the outside.' Interpret this doubled source against the tradition of the heroic interior (the self-sourcing protagonist of Romantic and post-Romantic fiction). What is Sachar conceding about the self when he allows the object of striving to do real physical work upon the striver?
2. Consider the phenomenology of 'the bitter smell of despair' that fills the air as Stanley approaches the precipice. Sachar deliberately places despair outside the body rather than inside it. Evaluate this as an ethical position — what follows, for the reader, if despair is weather rather than mood? What does Sachar refuse to do that a more sentimental author would?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide