Holes — Chapter 50

About This Passage

This is the very first paragraph of the book’s final chapter, and it contains the novel’s whole argument in three sentences. Stanley’s mother — an educated person who never left the house for Camp Green Lake — represents the skeptical reader who was never asked to believe in the curse. Sachar lets her voice the doubt, then quietly outflanks her with a single interesting coincidence: the cure for foot odor appeared the day after a Yelnats carried a Zeroni up a mountain, which is exactly the kind of fact the book has taught the reader to trust. Copying this passage trains students to notice Sachar’s favorite move — he never argues with the skeptic, he just places the evidence and steps back.

Narration Prompt

Retell Chapter 50 in six or seven of your own sentences. Name Stanley’s mother (and her skepticism about the curse), the Texas Attorney General (closing Camp Green Lake), Ms. Walker / the Warden (selling her family’s land), and the Girl Scouts (buying it). Explain what was inside the suitcase (low-quality jewels worth twenty thousand dollars, plus stock certificates and deeds worth close to a million dollars each for Stanley and Hector). Describe the Super Bowl party scene — Clyde Livingston on TV and on the couch, the Sploosh commercial, Clyde’s wife being winking and joking, Hector on the floor, and the woman humming behind him who is Hector’s mother.

Discussion Questions

1. Sachar opens the final chapter by letting Stanley’s mother say there was never a curse. The author then calmly answers her with one ‘interesting’ coincidence: Stanley’s father invented his cure the day after a Yelnats carried a Zeroni up the mountain. How do you know this is Sachar’s way of answering the skeptical reader without actually arguing with them — and what does this reveal about how this book has been making its case the whole time?
2. The jewels in the suitcase turned out to be worth only twenty thousand dollars, but the stack of old papers — stock certificates and deeds — turned out to be worth almost a million dollars each for Stanley and Hector. What in the story makes you think Sachar wrote the suitcase this way on purpose, and what is he teaching the reader about the difference between what LOOKS valuable and what IS valuable?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide