1A Lesson Plan #2 for Holes

 

One. The Underlying Psychological Curse in Holes is Learned Helplessness

 

Definition: Learned helplessness is the paralysis that results when you convince yourself that you are helpless to overcome a predicament when in fact, objectively speaking, you have the means to solve your problem. For example, the baby elephant grows up chained to a pole and its owner eventually removes the chain but the elephant, as an adult, never leaves the pole because he’s convinced that he’s chained to it.

 

Two. Characteristics of Learned Helplessness

1. A lack of belonging and feeling marginalized to the point of feeling like a “misfit.”
2.  A habit of repeated failure that reinforces your feelings of impotence.
3.  A defeatist, pessimistic attitude that creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.
4.  A fear of maturing and defining yourself without the dependence on others.
5.  An unconscious determination to fail because you’re afraid of success, which will force you to grow up and assume adult responsibilities.
6.  A determination to see yourself as a victim who has no control of what happens to you.
7.  A fearfulness of life that compels you to hide in the psychological womb of self-pity.
8.  Stupid enough to be weak but smart enough to manipulate others to bail you out every time.
9.  Even when you know the right steps and can do something on your own, you wear out people so that they carry your weight up the mountain. They decide it’s easy to carry you on their shoulders than it is to help you because you resist  being helped.
10.  You procrastinate long enough so that you always need an excuse or an extension, reinforcing your self-image as a flake, a slouch, and lazy bum.
11.  You create drama and crises out of nothing and enjoy watching other people put your fires out.

 

 

 

Three. What does the novel tell us about a cure for the curse that afflicts Stanley Yelnats and his family?

 

1. We cannot overcome the curse instantly or overnight. To the contrary, ridding the curse is a gradual process. Stanley’s change is gradual. As he digs holes he gets stronger and stronger. Just like his great-great grandfather was getting stronger and stronger as he carried the piglet up the mountain. In other words, we have to take baby steps to remove a curse.
2. We have to identify the problem. If we can’t see the problem, then we are beholden to it. Or if we refuse to identify the problem because such an identification hurts our ego, we remain enslaved to the problem.
3. We have to embrace the fear of change over the stability of our personal hell. Some people prefer their private hell because they’re comforted by its familiarity and are more terrified by the prospect of change. I can’t emphasize this enough: Most people prefer their familiar hell to the fear of the unknown, even if the unknown contains the possibility and hope of change for a better life.
4. Often a curse is reversed more by our character than it is by our actions. For example, even though Stanley is exhausted from digging holes, he fulfills his promise to his mother to write her letters and he fulfills his promise to help Zero learn to read. His actions reveal his character, which is based on loyalty, commitment, and fortitude (strength to endure).

 

Four. How Much Should a Research Paper be in Your Own Writing?

About 80% of the paper should be in your own writing. The other 20% should be direct quotations, paraphrase, and summary.

 

Five. When introducing an author, vary your verbs so that you’re not always saying “So and So writes . . .” or “So and So says . . . “ 

Here is an incomplete list of verbs to use in order to avoid the lame trap of using "writes" or "says" every time.

1. argues


2. asserts


3. proposes


4. posits


5. opines


6. explains


7. emphasizes


8. cautions


9. remarks


10. refutes


11. repudiates


12. admonishes


13. scolds


14. believes


15. observes


16. discusses


17. maintains


18. blames


19. accuses


20. contends

 

Six. Qualities of Successful Thesis:

 

1.     One sentence that establishes a demonstrable argument or purpose.

2.     
Demonstrable means two things: writer has authentic emotional connection to material so he or she doesn’t run out of gas at the midway point. Secondly, it means writer can support the thesis with mapping statements.  Sample: The popularity of SUVs reveals a malignancy about American consumerism. First, SUV makers market their vehicles toward people who wish to dominate and bully on the road; second, SUV drivers feel entitled to cheap gas to quench their driving habits, at the expense of American dependency on oil from hostile countries; third, SUV drivers often recklessly multi-task as they live inside their little cockpit fantasy. Lipstick, DVD, Carl’s Jr. gluttony, cell phone, etc.

3.     A good thesis is often followed by a clarifying sentence: Owning an SUV is morally irresponsible. This grotesque lapse of morality is evidenced by _______________, ______________________, _______________________, and _______________________________.

4.      A good thesis defies the obvious and possesses the So-What Factor: Sample: Tom Cruise and Terrell Owens are jerks. A better thesis: Society requires grotesque celebrities, such as Tom Cruise and Terrell Owens, to be our punching bags. First, these vile celebrities refute the unhealthy notion that riches result in goodness; second, our communal hatred for them gives us a sense of shared values; third, our loathing for these miscreants gives us catharsis and we vent our class envy and middle class frustrations. 


5.     A good thesis answers a compelling question. Why does no one care about Barry Bonds, even as he closes in on Hank Aaron’s record? In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, how did the US government leave so many people to die in a country that is the richest and freest in the world? Why do women continue to outnumber men in college enrollment? Another compelling question: Why do Americans spend more and more money on diets and workout programs and personal trainers as they continue to getter fatter and fatter and fatter and fatter?: Americans grow obscenely fatter in the face of their diet obsessions because none of their “programs” address the root of their fatness. To the contrary, their dieting exacerbates their real problem, which is that they are blind, incorrigible consumers. The diet is just another consumer commodity that promises a “magic bullet.” The diet is, like their overeating, a form of obsessive neurosis and orality. Finally, the diet becomes a form of shared communal experience that gives them a feeble sense of belonging and assuages their loneliness. Their laziness compels them to seek magic bullets rather than change behavior and get educated. Their diet obsession intensifies their food obsession. Their diet becomes a feeble way to stave off their loneliness.

 

Seven: What not to do when writing a thesis:

Don’ts

1.     Don’t write an easy thesis that is so self-evident or obvious that to support it is a complete waste of time that will bore your reader to tears, anguish, and resentment over your bovine effort. 


2.        Don’t write a thesis that leads to a sermon in which you bloviate a bunch of homilies, bromides, and truisms to your rankled reader.

3.     Don’t write a thesis that is so broad and general that the only way to support it is with a 500-page book.


4.       Don’t write a thesis that you don’t understand or believe in because your lack of conviction will give your paper a limp, soggy quality that will depress both you and your reader.


5.      Don’t write a thesis that is cold, cerebral, and intellectually detached for this approach will result in a frosty academic treatise with no vitality or fire to inflame your readers’ interest. 


6.     Don’t write a thesis that is ridiculous for ridiculous’ sake because, lacking in any vital ideas, you’re desperate to pique and provoke your reader with lame gimmicks.


7.      Don’t write a thesis that “sounds good” but in truth bores the hell out of you so that when you sit down to write your essay you cry and curse your decision to enroll in a composition class.


8.     Don’t write a thesis for which there is no accessible research material so that you’re left making up fictitious articles for your Works Cited page.

9.      Don’t write the same thesis that your friend wrote because “he got an A” when in fact you have no emotional connection to this carbon copy essay.


10.   Don’t write a thesis that simply echoes the same points of the essay you’re writing about, which results in a summary of the essay, not an analysis.

 

 

Eight. Writing a Thesis for Holes

 

Weak Thesis Statement

 

Holes is a grandiloquent novel about the arduous quest for redemption.

This thesis is pretentious, full of big words, the word “grandiloquent” is irrelevant and the writer probably doesn’t even know what the word means but used it to sound pretentious. Worst of all, the thesis is too broad and fails to organize the essay with any kind of mapping components.

 

Improved Version of Above Thesis

 

Stanley Yelnats must counteract the curse that has afflicted not just him and his family but an entire community by changing his identity from a victim to a hero and in effect finding redemption for all the grieving parties. Stanley’s dramatic transformation is the result of _________________________, __________________________, ________________________, and ___________________________.

 

Weak Thesis

The novel Holes is seething with the poison, contamination, and suffering brought upon by a Great Curse.

This is a terrible thesis because it’s obvious and sets up an essay that will be a summary of the novel and summaries are boring.

 

Improved Thesis

 

We can derive wisdom from Holes if we see how the novel defines the idea of curse in a radical light. Whereas the conventional idea of a curse is characterized by ___________________, ___________________, and ______________________, the more accurate definition rendered in the novel is distinguished by __________________________, __________________, and __________________________.

 

The above thesis sets up a contrast essay in which the writer argues for a radical definition of the word curse.

 

Weak Thesis

 

Holes shows us that all of us are fated to struggle with a curse.

This is too factual, does not outline an essay, and is too broad.

 

Improved Thesis

 

While most of us would surrender to the defeat of a curse as big in scope as the one rendered in Holes, the novel shows us that there is a way to overcome a family legacy of failure. To overcome a curse of the kind that Stanley Yelnats faces, we must, like Stanely, _______________________, ______________________, ________________________, and ___________________________.

 

Contrarian Thesis

McMahon’s attempt to brainwash his students with Holes, a sentimental children’s fairytale, is misguided, sanctimonious, and annoying. McMahon would have us believe that we can all become like Stanley Yelnats if we exercise the compassion, courage, and integrity that this chubby youngster exhibits throughout the novel. That our lives would improve if we emulated Stanley’s behavior is self-evident and too obvious to bother writing about in an essay. In fact, McMahon errors in teaching us that the novel is about redemption and overcoming a curse because Stanley Yelnats was already redeemed at the novel’s onset. Therefore, no such redemption was necessary. Yelnats’ redemptive soul, which needs no transforming, is evidenced by ________________________, ______________________, ______________________________, and _________________________________.

 

McMahon’s Rebuttal to the Contrarian Thesis  

 

Mr. Student Contrarian attempts to pooh-pooh my analysis of the Stanley’s dramatic transformation by arguing that Stanley needs no transformation because he is at the novel’s onset brimming with virtue. But I disagree. A close analysis of the novel will show that the Stanley Yelnats at the beginning of the novel is vastly different from the Stanely Yelnats at the end. This dramatic change is evidenced by __________________________, _____________________________, ____________________________, and _______________________________.

 

These final two thesis example, though in opposition to one another, are the best examples. Why? BECAUSE THEY ARE ARGUMENTATIVE. THE MORE ARGUMENTATIVE YOUR THESIS, THE MORE COMPELLING IT IS.