Book 3 Listicle

Jessica Cory

Bell 7

Mr. Coats

11/25/14

Five Reasons Why Stanley Yalnats is a Good Kid

The way Louis Sachar portrays the main character of the book Holes demonstrates a lot about how he wants the message to come across to the readers. Stanley Yalnats, the main character, is an innocent kid caught up in a bad situation. He and his whole family blame their bad luck on his “no good dirty rotten pig stealing great great grandfather”. Stanley always say that he is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Here are five reasons why Stanley Yelnats is actually a good kid:

#1: He doesn’t lie in Court about what happened.

Stanley was accused of stealing Clyde Livingston’s shoes. What really happened is a pair of shoes fell on top of him and hit him in the head. He didn’t think anything of it so he just kept them and thought that is was good luck. On his way home he was seen with the shoes and therefore was accused of stealing them. When he went to court, he told the judge that the shoes fell from the sky and hit him. Of course the judge thought this was crazy and he was accused guilty. He could have just said that he found them on the sidewalk and it would have sounded my believable.

#2: He writes to his mom from camp.

On his way to Camp Green lake, Stanley imagines it will be like the summer camp he always wanted to go to but wasn’t wealthy enough for. His mother thought this was how it was going to be too. When Stanley gets there and finds out it is nothing like that. He writes to his mother and makes up stories about what he did that day. Stanley does this because he doesn’t want his mom to worry about him.

#3: He gave X-Ray the item he found in his hole.

The rule is, if you find something worth bringing to the Warden’s attention, you will get the rest of the day off. It was very rare for someone to actually find something, but one day Stanley found a tube with the initials KB. He gave it to X-Ray to turn in because X-Ray had been at the camp for much longer. Stanley told X-Ray he should turn it in first thing tomorrow so he could get the whole day off instead of the little that was left of the current day. This was very nice of Stanley to do because he could have gotten a whole day off.

#4: He took the blame for the stolen sunflower seeds.

One day when Mr. Sir was filling the boys Canteens, Magnet snuck into his truck and stole his bad of sunflower seeds. When Mr. Sir drove off, the sunflower seeds were passed around. When they were tossed to Stanley the bags spilled out. When Mr. Sir noticed that his sunflower seeds were missing, he turned around to go see who took them. He saw the sack by Stanley’s hole. When he asked Stanley who took them, he said it was him, because he didn’t want to get Magnet in trouble.

#5: He refused to leave without Zero.

When Stanley’s lawyer came to Camp Green Lake to pick him up because it turned out he was innocent, Stanley refused to leave without Zero. His lawyer said that there is no way that he would come with them because they are not in charge of him. Stanley wouldn’t stop arguing it because he knew it wasn’t right for Zero to stay there. When they find out that Zero doesn’t have any files in the system, it was okay for him to come along with them.

All of these reasons prove that Stanley Yelnats is a good kid. It shows that if you are positive and try to overcome and make light of the bad situations you are in, you can find tons of happiness. Even though it seemed like only bad things happened to Stanley, he was still a nice person and was good to everyone.