Awesome / Holes

• For being a "no-good, dirty, rotten, pig-stealer", Elya Yelnats demonstrates some serious self-respect when he decides for himself that Myra Menke's hand in marriage isn't worth winning if she can't even choose him over Igor Barkov of her own accord. And so, he decides to go to America instead and see where a future without Myra takes him. Granted, it goes pear-shaped when he accidentally forgets his deal with Madame Zeroni in the process, cursing him and his family for generations.
  Elya: (quietly fuming, throws his flower bouquet on the ground) Marry Igor! You can keep my pig as a wedding present.
• When Trout asks Miss Katherine (pre-Kissin' Kate Barlow days) out on a date and she repeatedly turns him down:
  Trout: No one says "no" to Trout Walker!
  Miss Katherine: I believe I just did.
• Kate getting her well-deserved revenge on the sheriff who demanded that she give him a kiss in exchange for Sam's life when the lynch mob was burning down her schoolhouse and getting ready to kill Sam. She comes into the police station, dressed to the nines and acting all sweet, offering the sheriff that kiss he asked for. The sheriff is initially excited, then goes Oh, Crap! when she pulls out a gun and shoots him. She then applies a fresh coat of lipstick, kisses his cheek, and calmly leaves Green Lake.
• One thing to be said about Kate Barlow's rampage in the movie: she starts a killing spree by riding out of town on a horse, with a deadened Thousand-Yard Stare. It's implied she stole the sheriff's horse to begin her rampage, and no one wants to stop her. She never gets caught, only riding forward.
• Kate was a killing machine, and by bad luck, Stanley Yelnats I encountered her. Yet he had the sense to hand over his trunk of stock fortunes and not put up a fight. It's not explained why Kate spared him, to dehydrate in the desert, but Stanley I instead found "God's thumb" and survived by seeking refuge there. Stanley IV realizes while stranded in the desert that God's thumb is actually a hill with water and an onion field — the same field where Sam got his onions. In some twisted way, Kate allowed Sam to save both Stanleys, much as her peaches saved Hector.
• The implication that God Himself caused the drought in divine retribution for Sam's murder, leaving Green Lake to dry up, the town falling to ruins, and Trout Walker losing his wealth. "God will punish them," indeed.
  • Made better by Sachar's Armor-Piercing Question to the reader: "Who did God really punish?"
• Kate's death. As sad as it is, she faces the end with steely resolve and zero fear. After twenty years of robbing and killing, she comes back to Green Lake, now in ruins from the drought that started since Sam's murder. Trout Walker and his new wife Linda, a former student of Kate's who only married Trout for his money, find her and reveal that Trout's family fortune dried up with the lake and they figure Kate's accumulated wealth from robbing so many banks should get them back their former status. Kate won't tell them anything and stays Defiant to the End, taunting them that they and their descendants could spend the next century digging up the land and never finding what she buried. And when Kate's bitten by a yellow-spotted lizard (randomly by accident in the book, deliberately in the movie), she tells Trout and Linda to "start digging" and spends her last moments laughing at them as they demand to know where she buried her loot.
• Zero's confrontation with Mr. Pendanski in the movie which doubles as a Funny Moment:
  Mr. Pendanski: (hands Zero a shovel) Take it, Zero, it's all you'll ever be good for. You might as well teach this shovel how to read. D-I-G, what's that spell?
  Zero: (pauses, then hits Pendanski in the head with the shovel) Dig!
• Stanley stealing Mr. Sir's truck, accidentally driving it into a hole, and then running away. Also a Funny Moment. Sure, it didn't work, but it took guts for Stanley to even try it. Zigzag and Twitch even say it was awesome in a later scene in the book and movie.
• Stanley carrying Zero up the mountain, unknowingly breaking the curse on his family, as Zero is descended from the sorceress who cast it. In the movie, there’s a translucent image of Madame Zeroni looking on with a smile while Stanley does so despite both of the boys nearing dehydration, her original words echoing.
• When the Warden tries to take the suitcase from Stanley, Zero reads the name on the suitcase, revealing it belongs to Stanley's family, clearing both himself and Stanley from any charges of theft. Those councilors certainly regretted calling him illiterate. (It actually occurs in the book as well, and the Warden is stunned almost speechless.)
• At the end, as Stanley and Zero are about to leave Camp Green Lake, the Warden desperately begs Stanley if she can see what was in the suitcase. Stanley's response is to throw her Catchphrase right back at her: "Excuse me?" He then refuses to even let her see out of well-deserved spite.
• In the book, the inmates mock Stanley for using Hector to dig holes for him. While Stanley knows they are right, he brushes off their complaints by privately reflecting on how they would also have someone dig holes for them if they could. It is a sign of how Stanley has gotten tough enough that he refuses to fall for their manipulation anymore.
• In a deleted scene, Stanley imagines his campmates threatening the school bully not to mess with Stanley anymore. This was actually a part of what "happened" in the book.

---