1A Lesson Plan #3 for Holes

 

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.