Race in Louis Sachar's 'Holes'
Resolving Racial Issues in Children's Literature
Louis Sachar succeeded in resolving racial issues within his story without a didactic anti-racist objective or blunted ideological content.
Stanley Yelnats, Holes’ protagonist, is a boy placed in a young men’s penitentiary with a group of boys from all types of racial backgrounds- a context perfectly deployed for the exploration of ‘racial issues’. The anti-climax however is when Stanley confesses that there were no racial problems in the camp, since despite the boys from Group D being black, white or Mexican, ‘on the lake they were all the same reddish brown color- the color of dirt.’
Discussing Race Issues in Children’s Literature
Louis Sachar would have no doubt been torn between writing a novel that does not present itself to children with a didactic, anti-racist objective, nor present an unrealistic novel with blunted ideological content and without conflict.
Race is first discussed by Group D’s leader X-Ray when Stanley makes an agreement to teach another inmate, Zero, to read and write in exchange for his hole being dug. The sight of Stanley sitting down doing less work than everyone else made X-ray remark to another Black inmate, ‘Same old story … the white boy sits around while the black boy does all the work.’
Since Stanley was destabilizing X-ray’s intricate power base of less work and more control (a right which only X-ray had for himself), X-Ray made Stanley adopt an identity which would ostracize him from the group- an identity determined by the color of his skin. This situation is ironic since it is X-Ray himself that is mirroring the old white hegemonic relationship to the ‘Other’ that he accuses Stanley of.
Resolving Race Issues
Race issues are also explored in ‘Holes’ in a story set a hundred years earlier. The maltreatment of Sam by the citizenry of Green Lake, his subordinate position, and his gruesome death are very strong images- images we can see live in the present conscious of boys like X-Ray. But Sachar’s insistence on resolving the conflict (in true children’s literature fashion) gives his readers some kind of hope.
Despite some scholars believing Stanley and Zero’s relationship to be that of ‘oppressor and oppressed’[1], it is through their friendship of mutual benefit that their family ‘curse’ is resolved. Both boys break free from the events of the past when they defy Group D’s control (a microcosm of racial issues in reality), and turn from two boys with different coloured skin to two friends, two human beings, two individuals with the same goal.
When everything is resolved and Stanley and Hector are taken away by Stanley’s lawyer, it is only X-Ray who does not come to see them or congratulate them- the proof that whether you agree with the hegemony or try to work against it, it still means that you are defined by it and, ‘taking up a subject position in a racist society automatically entails taking up a racist position’. [2]
[1] Karen Coats. “Looking Glasses and Neverlands: Lacan, Desire, and Subjectivity in Children’s Literature.” Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2004. p. 135.
[2] Ibid. p. 135.
