Insight Into Initiation-A Probe Into The Initiation Theme In Louis Sachar's Children's Novel Holes

The renowned American writer of children's novel Louis Sachar makes contributions to showing concern for adolescents'coming-of-age. He has to his credit twenty-one books which are very popular among young readers. This thesis will focus on one of his important works entitled Holes. As an excellent fiction for young adults, Holes was accorded with so many prestigious awards and honors. It is the winner of the 1999 Newberry Medal Award and the National Book Award for Adolescent Literature. It fully deserves the title of a first-class modern literary work for its profound theme and superb artistic technique.Holes narrates a suspenseful story with rich flavor of legend. The teenager Stanley was sent to Camp Green Lake, a correctional facility, for a wrong conviction of stealing a well-known football player's sneakers, where he is assigned to dig holes on the dried-up lake bed in unbearable heat. On the life and death journey of rescuing his friend Zero, Stanley obtains unwavering friendship, exposes the fraud of digging holes to "build character", uncovers buried treasure of his ancestors. Holes shows the protagonist's initiating journey of stepping into maturity through adventures and ordeals. Stanley undergoes remarkable changes from increasing physical strength to enriched spiritual power, from self-abasement and self-pity to discovery of self-value, from lack of friends to gaining friendship. Relying on the dual power from spirit and wisdom, he is able to face up to various hardships imposed by nature and people around, thus wins the perfect development in personality.The thesis attempts to probe into the novel's initiation theme by analyzing the protagonist's coming-of-age process from the perspective of initiation novel. Accordingly the thesis is divided into five chapters.Chapter One gives a brief introduction to the author's family background and life career, the novel's literary status and critical reviews on the novel.Chapter Two is devoted to an in-depth analysis of the protagonist's mental growth in terms of two aspects, including the improvement of intellectual, emotional and social cognition, and the development of self-awareness.Chapter Three elaborates the establishing course of the protagonist's social identity, during which his morality escalates to a higher level. As a marginal teenager lack of social identity, Stanley accomplishes the transition from a natural being to a social being by fulfilling his social value through heroic deeds, hence attaining recognition from the mainstream society. Chapter Four discusses the protagonist's physical growth. Trials and tribulations make him grow up from an overweight teenager to a healthy and strong man. Physical growth is accompanied with the increase of his self-confidence and wills.Chapter Five is the conclusion, which summarizes the protagonist's maturing process in terms of spiritual, social and physical respects, stressing that the growth in these three aspects marks Stanley's successful transition from innocence to maturity. It also points out the realistic significance of the protagonist's initiation for adolescents' development, for which more attention is called to be paid.