Character Analysis
(Avoiding Spoilers)
Grew Up… in Texas. His family has always suffered from bad luck, but they love each other and manage to scrape by.
Living… in Camp Green Lake, a juvenile detention facility. Stanley was convicted of stealing a valuable pair of shoes, but he was innocent. Despite this, he was shipped off to a camp in the middle of the desert.
Profession… hole-digger. The Warden of the camp says that digging holes builds character, but Stanley suspects there’s more to it. Why else would they make teenaged boys dig endless holes in the middle of the desert?
Relationship Status… single. As for friends, he’sslowly becoming close with another camper, called Zero. The other boys and even the counselors say that Zero is stupid, but Stanley suspects that there’s more to the quiet, small boy than that.
Challenge… figuring out what’s really going on at Camp Green Lake, while trying to survive it. The Warden is clearly looking for something, but it’s hard to figure out what it is when Stanley is tired, thirsty, and overheated from working in the desert sun.
Personality… a little hapless, analytic, and kind. Stanley’s heard about his family’s bad luck his whole life, and now he doesn’t really expect anything to go well for him. Instead of that making him depressed, though, it makes him empathetic. He notices small details and pieces together mysteries, and though he’s frequently subject to bullying, he doesn’t become one himself.
Get to Know him in...
-
Stanley's family is cursed with bad luck. Unfairly sentenced to months of detention at Camp Green Lake, he and his campmates are forced by the warden to dig holes in order to build character. What they don't know is that they are digging holes in order to search for a lost treasure hidden somewhere in the camp.
-
Stanley Yelnats is under a curse. A curse that began with his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather and has since followed generations of Yelnatses. Now Stanley has been unjustly sent to a boys' detention center, Camp Green Lake, where the boys build character by spending all day, every day digging holes exactly five feet wide and five feet deep. There is no lake at Camp Green Lake. But there are an awful lot of holes. It doesn't take long for Stanley to realize there's more than character improvement going on at Camp Green Lake. The boys are digging holes because the warden is looking for something. But what could be buried under a dried-up lake? Stanley tries to dig up the truth in this inventive and darkly humorous tale of crime and punishment—and redemption.
