What happens in Part Two of Holes?
Chapter 11 kicks off Part Two of Holes and takes a big leap back in time, landing us 110 years in the past in a Latvian village where a young Elya Yelnats, Stanley's great-great-grandfather, lives. Elya is just fifteen and hopelessly smitten with the superficial Myra Menke. Myra's father is considering a marriage proposal from Igor Barkov, a pig farmer who promises a hefty pig in exchange for Myra's hand in marriage. In a state of desperation, Elya turns to Madame Zeroni, an elderly Egyptian woman with a withered arm who has become like a grandmother to him. Madame Zeroni quickly sees through Elya's infatuation and warns him that Myra is not very bright, viewing him and Igor Barkov as no different — she would choose between them with a coin toss. Nevertheless, she offers Elya a deal: she will provide him with a piglet, which he must carry up a specific mountain every day to drink from the stream there, all while singing a particular lullaby. By the time of the wedding, the pig will grow big enough to outbid Barkov. In return, Elya must carry Madame Zeroni up that same mountain before he leaves Latvia. Elya agrees to the arrangement. The chapter ends with the narrator’s subtle reminder that Elya forgot to keep his promise — the reason the Yelnats family has been cursed ever since.
Analysis
Louis Sachar uses Chapter 11 as a pivotal point, opening up the novel's timeline to expose the mythic framework beneath its realistic facade. The transition from Camp Green Lake's sun-baked present to the lush, rain-drenched Latvia of the past serves as a tonal statement: abundance and curse are intertwined. Here, Sachar’s writing takes on a more fable-like quality—declarative and unhurried, resembling oral storytelling—indicating that we’ve entered the realm of legend rather than social realism.
Madame Zeroni embodies the archetypal wise woman found in folklore: she bears physical marks (her withered arm reflects the shriveled lake), possesses clear moral insight, and is entirely unsentimental about Elya's illusions. Her assessment of Myra—"her head is as empty as a flowerpot"—acts as the chapter’s comedic backbone, while also echoing Sachar's recurring theme of people being valued as objects or commodities (Myra being traded for a pig and Stanley for a plot of land). The task of carrying the pig cleverly inverts Sisyphean labor: here, effort is meant to be redemptive rather than punitive—yet it foreshadows the hole-digging at Camp Green Lake, where repetitive physical work is forced upon rather than chosen by the characters.
The curse mechanism is introduced with a deliberate lightness, almost as an afterthought, which makes it all the more unsettling. Sachar trusts readers to grasp the weight of Elya's forgotten promise without explicitly emphasizing it, allowing dramatic irony to carry the burden across a century of Yelnats' misfortune.
Key quotes from Part Two
“Her head is as empty as a flowerpot.”
Madame Zeroni's blunt assessment of Myra Menke, delivered to Elya when he asks for her help winning the girl's hand in marriage.
“You and Igor Barkov are the same. She will choose between you by flipping a coin.”
Zeroni punctures Elya's romantic self-image, equating him with the brutish pig farmer to illustrate Myra's indifference.
“He forgot. That was the problem. He simply forgot.”
The narrator's closing summary of why Elya never carried Madame Zeroni up the mountain, the act of omission that sets the Yelnats family curse in motion.
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Create an accountSign inVocabulary in Part Two
- superficial
- Caring only about outward appearances rather than deeper qualities; shallow in thought or feeling.
- flipping a coin
- Tossing a coin in the air and letting which side lands face-up decide a choice, meaning the decision is left entirely to chance rather than judgment.