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Crystal Riches
Ron Christiansen
ENG 2330
Reading Analysis #2
Cause and Effect of Choices and its Role in Determining Destiny
What you do affects everyone around you. What others do affect you as well. Your
choices arent solely your own. Sometimes, you can just be in the wrong place at the wrong
time (7) and others poor choices affect you directly. This is the case of the Yelnats family in
the book Holes by Louis Sachar. Holes paints a theme of destiny where the choices of Elya
Yelnats, Madam Zeroni, and Katharine Barlow directly affect the lives of the present-day
Yelnats and Zeroni families.
Elya Yelnatss choices affect the present day Yelnats and Zeroni family. Elya Yelnats
was desperate to marry Myra Menke and asked for Madam Zeronis help. Madam Zeroni told
him what to do to win Myras hand in marriage but she had one request, to carry her up the
mountain and drink from the stream and sing her the same song (31). Elya Yelnats chose to
forego fulfilling his promise to Madam Zeroni due to his anger towards Myra. In turn, Madame
Zeroni put the curse in place for the current Yelnats family to suffer from. He also affected the
current Yelnats family by choosing to move to America rather than marry Myra Menke. Moving
to America was Madam Zeronis plan for him all along. She had said Go to America. Like my
son. Thats where your future lies (30). This is foreshadowing for the current Yelnats family
because their lives were in America and if Elya hadnt chosen to follow Madam Zeronis advice
and didnt go to America, they would have still been in Latvia.
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Madam Zeronis choices affect the present day Yelnats and Zeroni family. Madam
Zeroni chose to give Elya different advice when he told her that he didnt want to go to America.
Elya wanted to marry Myra Menke. She told him to take a pig, a little runt whom [the mother]
wouldnt suckle (30) and carry it up the mountain and sing to it as it drinks from the stream and
grows to be bigger and then use that to win Myra Menke. If Madam Zeroni had decided not to
give Elya this advice, he wouldve never broken her promise and the curse never would have
been put in place for the current Yelnats family to suffer from.
Destiny intertwined Hector Zeroni and Stanleys lives together by allowing them both to
be in the same city in America. If Zero had chosen to throw the shoes over at a different spot of
the city, Stanley would have never gotten into trouble. If Zero hadnt gone to Camp Green Lake
for his punishment, Stanley and him wouldve never met and wouldnt have broken the curse.
Zero chose to help Stanley dig his holes in exchange for reading lessons, if he hadnt made this
choice they possibly could have never gotten to be close friends and the curse would have been
left in place.
Katharine Barlows choices affect the present day Yelnats and Zeroni family. Katharine
Barlows choices also affected the present day Yelnats by falling in love with the onion farmer,
Sam whom she had fallen in love with as he fixed up her schoolhouse by using the repetitious
phrase, I can fix that (111). If she hadnt fallen in love with Sam, he wouldnt have died on his
boat and Zero wouldnt have had shelter to hide under when he ran away from Camp Green Lake
and Stanley wouldnt have found him alive. Katharines choice of becoming an outlaw also
affected the present day by robbing the first Stanley Yelnats which gave her possession of a
suitcase with Stanley Yelnats name on it which she chose to bury her loot in. If she hadnt
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chosen to use the suitcase, it wouldnt have had Stanleys name on it and it wouldnt have been
his property when he found it at Camp Green Lake.
Stanley Yelnats choices affect present day Yelnats and Zeroni family. Stanleys choices
also had a direct effect on his life and the lives of those around him. He chose to walk home by
the freeway and as a result the shoes Zero threw over the edge hit him on the head. He could
have chosen to go home a different way or called for a ride but he didnt. He chose to keep the
shoes that had fallen out of the sky (23) because he felt like he was holding destinys shoes
(24). He was, just not in the context that he had originally thought. If he hadnt chosen to keep
the shoes, he wouldnt have attended Camp Green Lake, he wouldnt have met Hector Zeroni or
had the opportunity to break the curse on his family. While at Camp Green Lake if Stanley
hadnt found the lipstick and someone else had, the Warden would have found the treasure right
away. Another piece of destiny is if Stanley wouldnt have chosen to help Hector learn how to
read, they wouldve never become close friends and the curse wouldnt have been broken. If
Stanley had not broken the curse, his father wouldnt have invented Sploosh and rescued their
family from poverty with his new invention.
The theme of destiny in Holes is portrayed by the choices of Elya Yelnats, Madam
Zeroni, and Katharine Barlow and how their actions directly affected the Yelnats and Zeroni
families in the present day. The story illustrates how easily ones life can go amiss simply
because of the choices of others from the past and how they affect the present day. It also shows
how everyones destinies are irrevocably intertwined. Ones choices may affect anothers
destiny, but its up to the individual to decide how others choices will affect their life.

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Works Cited
1. Sachar, Louis. Holes. 1998. Random House. Print.