Holes — Chapter 42

About This Passage

In this passage Stanley works out, in explicit operational detail, what the life of a fugitive would actually require of him — parents he cannot visit, a new identity, the possibility of a buried treasure marked only by the initials K B on a lipstick container. Sachar moves Stanley across a threshold here: from a boy to whom things happen, to a person who plans. Copying this passage asks a student to track how the interior register of the novel shifts from dread to invention, and to notice that Stanley keeps interrupting himself with 'crazy' even as the plan gets more specific.

Narration Prompt

In four or five sentences, reconstruct the interior arc of Chapter 42 — from Zero's declaration of his 'last hole,' through Stanley's recognition that he likes himself, to the chapter's final question, 'You want to dig one more hole?'

Discussion Questions

1. Sachar opens the chapter with Zero's 'That’s the last hole I will ever dig,' and closes it with Stanley asking Zero to dig 'one more hole.' Consider what this structural inversion suggests about the author's theory of freedom. Is Stanley's request a betrayal of Zero's declaration, or its fulfillment in a different register?
2. Stanley reasons that his conviction of 'destiny' is 'more than a coincidence.' Evaluate the epistemic warrant for this claim. On what grounds does Stanley distinguish destiny from coincidence, and how does Sachar engineer the novel's plot so that neither reading — providential or post-hoc — can be conclusively refuted by the text?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide