Holes Unit Assessment - Analytical writing
How does Sachar cleverly use coincidence, structure, and with holding information to create a unified and entertaining story?

Louise Sachar uses many techniques and skills in the novel holes. He cleverly and accurately uses coincidence and with holding information, in a tight structure to create a unified and highly successful and entertaining novel. His techniques used bond together to amuse and intrigue the reader. Sachar switches between the past in a well orderly way, effortlessly creating curiosity for the reader.

Sachar has used many coincidences in the novel holes. Sachar chooses not to reveal the fact that Zero is related to Madame Zeroni, the women who “cursed” Stanley’s family. The repetition of his name being used builds up suspense for the reader and creates intrigue. “My real name isn’t zero you know… “It’s Hector. Hector Zeroni”. This surprises the reader as well as keeps the story flowing and interesting wanting the reader to find out more. Dramatic Irony is used as Stanley does not realise that Zero is related to the women who has put the “curse” on Stanley’s family, which makes the reader feel included in the story.
Another example of coincidence was that Stanley and Zero ate only onions when they broke free from camp green lake, to survive, and Sam, a character from the past, used to sell onions and use them to help cure sick people. Sachar used onions to symbolise them as a positive healing factor in the novel. Onions also helped Stanley and zero survive from the bite of the deadly yellow-spotted lizard. Again Sachar used dramatic irony as Zero and Stanley did not know why they didn’t get bitten yet again making the reader feel included in the story. Sachar uses a lot of clues which alerts the reader and creates curiosity as well as entertain the reader.
Stanley and Zero find refuge on god’s thumb (a mountain) when they break free from Camp Green Lake and Elya Yelnats finds Refuge on a mountain in Latvia where they both find water. Stanley Carries Zero up the mountain to feed him water, which was the promise Elya made to Madame Zeroni, which he forgot to fulfil and was why the curse was on Stanley’s family. Stanley un-knowingly broke the curse by doing this. Once more Sachar used dramatic irony which alerts the readers as the reader knows more than the characters. This excites the reader and makes them feel involved.
The idea of how Stanley and Zero both end up on the same camp is quite an important coincidence. Without the two characters meeting the curse could not be broken. When Sachar introduces Zero the reader does not think that Zero has a big character in the novel but as the story carries on the reader becomes more suspicious and gets an idea that zero has something to do with the curse.
Sachar also symbolised peaches as a cure for foot odour. He time to time mentioned them in different parts of the story (e.g. in Sam’s boat which was found on the lake by Stanley and Zero). Stanley’s father invented “spoolsh” as a cure for foot odour which was peaches and was used to cure Clyde Livingstone’s foot odour. Peaches were also sold by Kate Barlow and she would give them to Trout Walker as he also had foot odour problems. This gave the reader a clue of how Stanley’s father could invent the cure for foot odour as it had been mentioned in the past that peaches were Kate Barlow’s remedy.
Sachar accurately and carefully links up the characters with the setting/objects to create coincidences.

In the Structure of the novel, sachar switches between the past and present. He does this by sometimes having an object, place or even a person trigger a moment that took place which is related to it/them for example Kate Barlow’s lipstick tube. By switching between the past and present the story makes a lot of sense, the reader knows where everything comes from and how things started off. Sachar has linked everything together smoothly. The novel is much faster