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
- A lack of belonging and feeling marginalized to the
point of feeling like a “misfit.”
- A habit
of repeated failure that reinforces your feelings of impotence.
- A
defeatist, pessimistic attitude that creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- A fear
of maturing and defining yourself without the dependence on others.
- An
unconscious determination to fail because you’re afraid of success, which
will force you to grow up and assume adult responsibilities.
- A
determination to see yourself as a victim who has no control of what
happens to you.
- A
fearfulness of life that compels you to hide in the psychological womb of
self-pity.
- Stupid
enough to be weak but smart enough to manipulate others to bail you out
every time.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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?
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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