Holes

I really enjoyed our discussion today on Holes and I wish we got to spend more than one day on this book. To be honest, while I was reading this novel I did not "read into" any part of the story in detail. I read it as just a fun read, as some of you did as well.

As we said that this book was "clean" and had a nice, connected ending, I think that some of the points Sachar might have been trying to make are not so clear and, unlike the plot, may be open-ended. A topic that we discussed today (somewhat) and I think would be interesting to discuss in more detail (as an open-ended question) is race.

When the question, "What was Sachar trying to say about race?" was brought up, I started thinking of different reasons, but I still couldn't come to an answer. I decided for my blog I wanted to share a few specific examples that stuck out to me when thinking about this.

The instance that stood out to me was when the first Stanley Yelnats (a white man) went to Madame Zeroni (essentially a black woman) for help. I know I might be taking this way out of context and going too far with it, but here I thought that Sachar might be trying to make a point about slavery. Back when slavery was legal, white people essentially turned to black people for “help” to benefit their own lives. I saw this paralleling with Stanley Yelnats as he turned to Madame Zeroni to benefit his own life, but did not bother to help her in return when she asked for it, just as slaves were mistreated.

Another incident that stood out was Stanley carrying Zero up God’s Thumb. Again, I might be reading in to this too much, but I thought that Sachar might have included this to show that white people have helped black people, which is contradictory to the previous message. In this situation, I thought Stanley carrying Zero paralleled the Civil War when the whites in the north fought for the freedom of slaves. (I think you could take this even farther by saying that The Warden and her staff represent the south during the civil war who was trying to keep the slaves oppressed).

As those two instances specifically stuck out in my head and they contained different (but related) messages, I asked myself one more question that I will leave you with to ponder:

When thinking about the specific instances of situations where race is prevalent in the novel, do you think these instances complement each other, or do you find them to be somewhat contradictory?