Fate and Fortune in a Modern Fairy Tale: Louis Sachar's Holes
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1019682032315
This article by Pat Pinsent looks at Holes through the lens of the traditional fairy tale. The article examines how elements of fairy tales - "magic objects and formulae, stereotypical roles and repeated motifs" - are mixed with the grittier realism of the characters' situations in order to create a realistic, relatable, and ultimately uplifting story. In particular, the author of this piece tries to explain how Sachar manages to pull off the fairly unrealistic ending without swerving into unsatisfying cliche, by blending both realism and fantasy.
This is a particularly good read for thinking about genre, as well as the mystical, magical, and improbable events in the novel. The story is not pure realism, although there are realistic elements to it. What purpose does the magic serve?
Reading in the Gaps and Lacks: (De)Constructing Masculinity in Louis Sachar’s Holes
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10583-005-9452-4
In this article, Annette Wannamaker takes a critical sociological look at the images of manhood and masculinity in this novel, which, because it is set at a all-male correctional institute, is mostly filled with boys. Wannamaker discusses the discrepancy between portrayal of manhood that the book intends to portray, which she says is a softened and mitigated one, and the actual message that it transmits.
She claims that female symbols and characters are portrayed as dangerous or "disgusting," and masculinity is prioritized. For example, the Warden is a vicious female character who makes the boys dig endless holes, and Kissing' Kate's character is monstrous, a "conflation of feminine sexuality with criminality and death." On the other end of the spectrum, girls in general are devalued and insulted when Mr. Sir repeatedly tells the boys that they are not Girl Scouts - implying that Girl Scouts are not tough, and that to be likened to one is an insult to boys who are supposed to be 'better' than them.
Furthermore, Wannamaker thinks that this masculinity is a fairly intense and toxic one if we look beyond the surface level. She writes that "Stanley’s coming-of-age story also involves conforming to stereotypical constructs of masculinity, which require the boy to endure grueling physical trials and which require him to negate the feminine in order to become masculine." The novel, according to Wannamaker, essentially promotes a traditional view of masculinity that is based on labor, violence, and overcoming danger.
While masculinity is not an explicit or obvious theme in the text, it is an interesting lens through which to look at the book, and readers can come to their own point of view: is the text glorifying a "visceral" boyhood at the expense of the feminine, or are the boys in the book less noxious and violently masculine than Wannamaker would have us think?
Holes: Folklore Redux
http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/v28n2/mascia.html
The way that the genre of folk tales influences and intersects Holes is the subject of this article by Elizabeth G. Mascia. The debt that Holes owes to a long tradition of folk tales has not gone unnoticed by many of its readers, and Mascia sets out to identify the sources of the incredible or fantastical elements in the story, ultimately - like Pat Pinsent - hoping to explain how Sachar veers away from realism in order to provide the reader with a satisfying and uplifting conclusion.
This text is a solid read for anyone trying to identify and understand the fairy tale and folklore devices used in the novel. Mascia draws a link between Kate Barlow and the tall-tale bandit culture of the Wild West, and shows Stanley Yelnats IV to be a version of the traditional pure-of-heart underdog fairy tale hero. Mascia is particularly interested in how the Old Word and New World fairy tales play off each other in this story which spans generations and continents.
Louis Sachar's Holes: Palimpsestic Use of the Fairy Tale to Privilege the Reader
https://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/ALAN/v35n3/nicosia.html
Laura Nicosia is interested in "the text’s layered narrative poetics," in other words, how the stories of Kate Barlow and Stanley's ancestors are woven into Stanley Yelnats' story. Nicosia claims that "the synchronous overlapping of the atemporal familial curse and the folk legend of Kissin’ Kate Barlow" "act as narrative vehicles which serve to privilege Sachar’s reader beyond the knowledge of the characters."
Although the narrative is overarchingly linear, taking Stanley from his bus ride to Camp Green Lake to his ride out, Nicosia maintains that the narrative is "multidirectional, multispatial and multitemporal." The way that the three different stories overlap pushes at the boundaries of what we expect from a traditional children's book, and this lends the novel a postmodern feel that elevates it out of the realm of children's entertainment and into the realm of literature. The author deftly weaves together the tales of separate groups of characters, who are nonetheless "related and inter-related" in important ways. Sometimes the shift happens from chapter to chapter, other times from section to section - and sometimes, radical shifts are "enjamb[ed]... from one paragraph to another."
Effectively, the author uses the "scatter-shot" method of shifting between the stories in order to emphasize the presentness of the past - whatever happened in Latvia or in Green Lake a hundred or more years ago is still with Stanley and the Warden and all the other characters today.
Haunting and History in Louis Sachar's Holes
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/western_american_literature/v045/45.2.mollegaard.html
This essay covers a lot of ground, from the position of women and minorities in the novel, to the "Old West" mythology that haunts this novel (i.e. Kissin' Kate and the Green Lake narrative). In particular, Møllegaard is interested in how the Old West infiltrates a story about the "urban New West" (i.e. the city where Stanley lives) with its cultural connotations, for example its brand of masculinity, conflict, and violence.
The paper also draws an interesting parallel between the action of digging, which occupies much of the novel, with the digging for memories or for clues about the past.
