Part I. McMahon Commentary on the Meaning of Holes
The novel’s title is fecund with meaning. Holes
refers to the wasted struggle people engage in when they’re pursuing false
dreams or chimeras. Holes also refers to the wasted effort we expend on
endeavors without having the proper knowledge or wisdom as a foundation. In a
rush for instant results, we take what we think are short cuts and actually
lose valuable time because any endeavor without the proper foundation is doomed
to fail. Another meaning of Holes is the need to dig into the past and find
missing pieces of a puzzle that make up our predicament so that we can get to
the root of our problems and solve them. Digging holes is also symbolic of the
journey into darkness in which we must go through the torment of hell before we
can taste the delights of heaven. All of these meanings are evident in the
novel.
One. Holes as a metaphor for the wasted effort of “dumb work”
instead of “smart work.”
Dumb work is working toward a goal that is
disconnected from who we really are and what we really want. When you don’t
know what you really want in life, you end up chasing chimeras, a word for
false dreams or mirages.
Example:
A college friend had an older sister who got her
medical degree and he was under pressure to impress his family. He became an
accountant not understanding that he didn’t have the personality for corporate
culture. Now he’s an alcoholic truck driver for Frito Lay. His accounting
degree is toilet paper.
A couple spends all their money on new clothes for
the clubs and having “Chanel No. 5 Moments” together but behind closed doors
they hate each others’ guts. Their lives are reduced to stringing along a bunch
of Chanel No. 5 Moments.
A couple doesn’t really want love; they like the idea
of love. What they really want is their relationship to be a drama out of an
MTV music video. As an example, my
friend’s ex girlfriend chased him off a bus and pushed him into bushes and they
both enjoyed it. They loved the drama, but they didn’t see that what they were
doing is childish and lame.
A couple gets married, not because they love each
other, but because all their friends got married and they feel left out, they
want wedding presents, and they want the credibility and instant adulthood
status that a wedding provides them.
Bling is a chimera or a false dream because it leaves
a bigger and bigger hole. Every time you buy a bigger watch or car or house the
emptiness gets bigger. Every time you shop for bling, you don’t sate your
appetites, you actually stimulate them. This is called Feeding the Beast.
Majoring in something purely for money with no
interest in it is a way of digging yourself into a hole.
Looking for a “perfect life”: perfect body, perfect
partner, perfect health, perfect house, perfect car, and then being bored and disenchanted. George Bernard says
there are two tragedies in life: not getting what we want and getting it.
If you don't really want something, you're a faker, a poser. A student flunks my class, then returns 4 years later and gets an A because he knows what he must do to get an education.
Eli Manning can't get a first down on fourth and inches because he doesn't dive. Instead, he tentatively shuffles forward and gains nothing. He's afraid to get down and dirty.
Two. Holes
is a metaphor for another kind of dumb work, the kind that results from not
thinking ahead. In other words, technique and preparation save you time instead
of going right into a project with tools that aren’t primed for the job or
without knowing the correct techniques.
In 2002 I was caught up in a vicious cycle of
overeating and overtraining, the two feeding each other. Little did I know, I
was in a cycle of bingeing and purging.
Crash diets are hard and they don’t work. Over 98% of
people who go on diets actually gain weight because they binge and mess up
their metabolisms.
Marathon training vs. consistent moderate exercise.
Cramming the night before a test vs. studying
moderately over a consistent period.
When I was six years old fishing for bass in Bass
Lake, I didn’t know how to use a fishing reel. When a bass bit the hook, I ran
up the hill. I almost lost the fish. My father told me to hold the reel and
wind it clockwise.
If you saw or cut something with a dull blade because
you’re too lazy to spend five minutes sharpening the blade, you end up spending
10 times as long cutting whatever it is you’re cutting or slicing or sawing.
You’re too lazy to get your pants hemmed at the dry
cleaners so you roll up the bottom and crease the hem and all day you have to
bend over and cinch up your pants because they keep falling down and dragging
on the ground. You end up spending 100 times more rolling up your pants than
the fifteen minute trip to the dry cleaners.
Daryl Gates went too far in his gang round-up in the
early 1990s arresting a lot of innocent people during the sweeps. The LAPD lost
the trust of the community and this created worse conditions for stopping
crime. The LAPD was digging holes, as it were.
Three. Holes is a metaphor for digging deep into
the past to unearth the causes of your disconnections.
Stanley Yelnats discovers that carrying Hector Zeroni
(Zero), the descendent of Madame Zeroni, up the hill ends the curse from his
great-great grandfather’s failure to carry Madame Zeroni up the hill.
Sometimes we need to confront an issue from the past
in order to forgive others, like the case of the missing cookies from my coat
pocket in kindergarten.
The curse ended. Of course, we don’t talk about
curses today. Instead we use a different language like “resolution” and
“closure.”
Four. Holes
is a metaphor for going to deep into the darkness before you go find the light.
In other words, we must go to hell before we can get to heaven.
You can die a slow death being addicted to shopping,
unhealthy relationships, drugs, alcohol, your cell phone or you can find a way
to beat the addiction. But to beat an addiction, you have to go through
withdrawals and face the demons that you tried to run from during your
addiction so that initially you’re going to have to go through hell.
Part II. Sample Thesis Statements
We all have to dig holes in life.
Not a thesis. This is more of an introductory
sentence. It’s too general and has no mapping components.
Holes has many different meanings.
Again, this is too broad.
Holes is a rich metaphor that refers to
___________________________, _________________________,
________________________________, and ____________________________________.
This is better because we have a guide or a map for
where we’re going in the essay.
Many of us think of the phrase “digging ourselves
into a hole” as a bad thing. But the novel Holes shows the contrary, that the
excruciating suffering of digging holes, metaphorically speaking, is an
essential pathway to redemption. The hellish journey into the darkness of holes
saves Stanley Yelnats and conversely ourselves because this journey has four
positive outcomes, which include _____________________________,
_______________________________, _________________________________, and
______________________________________.
We could talk about the gradual strength Stanley
enjoys from digging holes. We could talk about the family history he unearths.
We could talk about the criminality he exposes in the warden. We could talk
about the heroic image he uncovers in himself, as opposed to the wimp and the
victim that he has been all his life.
McMahon is fond of bloviating and rhapsodizing about
the wonders of journeying into the darkness of holes, as if delving into our
hellish past through whole-hearted introspection is some panacea that will save
us from our cursed selves. But in fact, McMahon’s eagerness to have us unearth
our dark secrets is both misguided and dangerous. For the type of introspection
that results from the kind of “hole-digging” McMahon describes can often result
in _________________________, _________________________,
___________________________, ________________________.
This contrarian student might argue that introspection
can often inflate or exaggerate our idea of our problems so that we feel
overwhelmed and paralyzed by our problems. Secondly, this student might point
out that not all investigations into the past result in the happy endings of
this young adult novel. Some family secrets, when exposed, result in shame and
disgrace, not salvation. Thirdly, this type of introspection can make us turn
too much inward, resulting in narcissistic naval-gazing.
Mr. Contrarian Student’s opposition to McMahon’s
analysis of Holes collapses under the weight of a deliberate and malicious
mischaracterization of McMahon’s definition of what it means to “journey into
the darkness of holes.” For it is not narcissistic introspection, as Mr.
Contrarian claims, but courageous exposure of unpleasant truths that are
holding us back, that are keeping justice from being fulfilled, and that are
impeding us from seeing ourselves unshackled by the lies we’ve been conditioned
to tell ourselves.
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