Something I thought of (which evolved into an essay)

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In the past few days, I’ve been attempting to work on two Holes fanfics. I got halfway through one of them, but the other one, which was meant to be novel-length, sort of…stopped. Which is quite annoying.

Anyway, the last Holes fanfic which I actually completed was Name. It was about the Warden’s childhood, and it rather freaked me out. (What can I say, the lizards scare me ) And I read through it again for no real reason, and I wondered about something…

In the book, the Warden isn’t given a first name, she’s called ‘The Warden’ or ‘Ms Walker’ all the way through. But in the movie (which was written by Louis Sachar also, so it probably counts as canon if it doesn’t contradict anything in the book) Dr Pendanski calls her Lou. And that got me thinking…Sam’s donkey was called Mary Lou, and the Warden’s grandfather hated Sam, and…well, as the fanfic turned out, the Warden’s father named her Lou and her older sister Mary in order to humiliate them. And when I read all that again, I started thinking about something again…hardly anyone at Camp Green Lake goes by their real name. The Warden is called the Warden by the staff and the boys…she’s just the person who’s in power around the camp. If you accept some parts of the movieverse as canon, Mr Sir doesn’t go by his real name either, because he’s on the run from the law. It’s a big thing in the book that all the boys go by nicknames…when Stanley gets accepted into the group, they give him a nickname, Caveman.

And (heh, sorry, just going with my train of thought) Kate begins her story as Miss Katherine, the schoolteacher, and after Sam is killed, stops being called Katherine and goes by Kissin’ Kate Barlow, the name of an outlaw, instead.

I think I’m onto something here. ;)

The camp itself, Camp Green Lake, only has one name, but it’s a deceptive name, since it’s hardly a camp, there’s very little green and there is no lake. Which is really quite clever, because one of the the storylines is the Warden decieving the boys into digging for her.

There’s also Pendanski. At first I couldn’t think of anything for him, but then I remembered he actually did have a nickname…the boys call him Mom. And of course, by the end of the book, it’s obvious he’s anything but the parenting type.

Hmmm…what else? I suppose there’s Trout, who’s real name is Charles, but I’m not sure if that works, since with either name he’s a racist and a killer. (Unless…I suppose you could have it so Charles is just a rich jerk, but Trout is actually the murderer*.)

Yeesh…anyway, what am I getting at here? I’m not sure. (I’m really, really bad at writing essays, as you can undoubtly tell) I think it’s supposed to mean…the fact that a lot of the characters have more than one name…that they all have sort of a dual identity as well. The D-Tent boys…on the one hand they’re a bunch of bullies, on the other hand they’re vunerable kids (flicked through the book again and found something I missed last time…when Stanley hears Squid crying in the night). Kate…she was a schoolteacher, and then became a murderer. And so on.

There’s also Zero. He’s different, because, as Stanley realises, he’s the only one who ‘either didn’t have a real name or else didn’t have a nickname’. However, he doesn’t know which one Zero doesn’t have. But as he gets to know Zero better, he finds out Zero’s real name (Hector) and thus the real Zero, who’s a smart kid who just doesn’t like answering stupid questions.

Now I come to think of it, of all the major characters, I think Sam’s the only one who keeps his name all the way through his part of the story. Katherine becomes Kissin’ Kate, but Sam stays the same. Admittedly that’s because he’s dead, but it’s sort of interesting, because Sam and Stanley are the only characters in the book who don’t really do anything wrong. Stanley has his flaws, but he was innocent of the crime he was acccused of, and he befriends Zero while the others don’t. Sam, on the other hand, was guilty of the ‘crime’, but it oughtn’t to have actually been a crime. Sam is the innocent party all the way through, and he gets killed for it.

How all this gets back to Stanley (because hey, it’s his story) I’m not sure. Stanley’s name, Stanley Yelnats, is the same forwards and backwards, as is pointed out in the book…I read a review of the movie that explained that rather nicely, but I don’t want to go looking through my History files for it. Anyway, I think I’ve got it…Stanley’s name is actually one of the things that saves him in the end (the other is the fact that he teaches Zero to read) because of the suitcase belonging to the first Stanley Yelnats, and by that point the nickname Caveman doesn’t really mean anything for him at all. Stanley Yelnats is his real name. I also think there’s some significance in the fact that the first Yelnats in the Holes timeline, the one who accidently sets the curse in motion, was the only Yelnats male in the story not called Stanley…it means that our Stanley isn’t just like the first Yelnats sent back to remedy the curse, he’s his own person as well. And he does more than simply right the curse, but that’s a whole ‘nother essay.

Also, in the end Squid tells Stanley to tell his mother that Alan…his real name…said he was sorry. (And in the movie, Armpit does, and the other boys are impressed by it). So I suppose that with Stanley finding out who he is as a result of his misadventures (it’s a coming-of-age story, after all) he helps everyone else decide what ‘name’…what side of them…they want to use.

If you managed to follow all/any of that, well done. ;)

*=Oh, all right, it doesn’t exactly say that Trout was the one who shot Sam, but I think it very probably was. He was the one leading the mob, anyway.