Holes Louis Sachar

Camp Green Lake

• Stanley Yelnats IV (also known as "Caveman" by the rest of the campers): Stanley is a 14-year-old boy who does not have any friends from school and is often picked on by his classmates and the school bully. Stanley's family is cursed with bad luck, and although they do not have much money, they always try to remain hopeful and look on the bright side of things. Stanley shares these traits with his family and, although he does not have a lot of self-confidence, he is not easily depressed, a characteristic that helps him adjust to the horrendous conditions of Camp Green Lake. However, he has a bad habit of blaming his great-great-grandfather when he gets in trouble. This habit made him impudent.[4] As the book progresses, Stanley slowly gains strength. He identifies the people who threaten him, like the Warden. While he tries not to get in trouble, he also stands up for himself and his friends and family. Stanley rebels for the rights of his friends when he steals Mr. Sir's truck to look for Zero in the dry lake bed.[5]
• Zero (Hector Zeroni): Zero is known to be the best digger and is the smallest and youngest inmate at Camp Green Lake. So often, he is considered to be stupid or a mere nothing by the other boys and the counselors alike. He lacks an education, meaning he's unable to read or write. Despite this, he is intelligent and manages to stand for himself in the face of adversity, breaking Mr. Pendanski's nose with a shovel after one too many snide remarks. Typically he is noted as the character who hardly speaks due to the fact that he is wary of those who mock him. He is said to always have a scowl on his face and does not like to answer questions. Zero is shown to be an honest character after becoming close friends with Stanley. Zero is the one who stole the shoes that Stanley was arrested for and accused of stealing. He is the descendant of Madame Zeroni, the woman who put a curse on Stanley's family. He has been homeless for most of his life, as well as abandoned by his mother at a very young age. Although he suffers quite a bit, he always seems to persevere and come out on top.
• X-Ray (Rex Washburn): X-Ray is the unofficial head of the boys in Group D, who was sent to Camp Green Lake after he was caught selling dried herbs to people who thought they were buying marijuana (as revealed in the spin-off novel Small Steps). X-Ray decides that Stanley will be called "Caveman" and fixes the order of the line for water. X-Ray maintains his position as the leader of the boys even though he is one of the smallest and can barely see without his glasses. He convinces Stanley to give him the lipstick tube that Stanley finds in his hole so that he can have the day off instead of Stanley. X-Ray is able to maintain his position at the head of the group through a system of rewards and allies. Every time that Stanley does something nice for X-Ray, X-Ray is nice to Stanley and stands up for him when the other boys pick on him. When Stanley becomes friends with Zero, however, X-Ray's system is threatened and he becomes hostile toward Stanley. His nickname X-ray comes from it being pig Latin of his actual name, Rex.
• Squid (Alan): Squid is a member of Group D at Camp Green Lake and one of X-Ray’s closest friends and enforcer. He is often the one taunting Stanley for sending and receiving letters to and from his mother. Just like X-Ray, Squid is very tough but very subservient to X-Ray's rules and directions. However, he does have a sensitive side to him, as Stanley wakes to hear him crying one night, and Alan asks Stanley to write to his (Alan's) mother when Stanley leaves Camp Green Lake.
• Armpit (Theodore Thomas Johnson): X-Ray's other close friend at camp who like Squid, acts as one of X-Ray’s enforcers. He pushes Stanley when Stanley calls him Theodore. His nickname Armpit is due to him being stung by a scorpion at camp and the venom traveling up into his armpit, causing him to complain about his armpit hurting.
• Magnet (José): Another member of Group D. Magnet earned his nickname because of his ability to steal, he got into Camp Green Lake for stealing animals from the zoo and refers to his fingers as "little magnets".
• ZigZag (Ricky): Zigzag is described as being the tallest kid of Group D, constantly looking like he has been electrocuted, with frizzy hair. Stanley often thinks he is the strangest camper at Camp Green Lake. Zigzag is the one who hit Stanley on the head with a shovel, but later did apologize. Zigzag suffers from paranoia, highlighting his displayed "craziness".
• Twitch (Brian): A car thief who arrives at camp after Stanley. He got his nickname for his constant twitching.
• The Warden (Louise Walker): Running Camp Green Lake, she is known to be violent, abusive, and quite rude. She uses her power and privilege to get what she wants and make members of the camp do as she pleases. She has hidden cameras, using them to spy on the members of the camp. She is often thought to have hidden cameras in the showers, causing Stanley to be paranoid whenever he takes a shower, rushing out as fast as possible. She wears nail polish traced with rattlesnake venom, and scratches those who displease or go against what she says. She has the members of Camp Green Lake digging holes to look for Kate Barlow's hidden treasure. She is the granddaughter of Charles "Trout" Walker. Her family had been digging the treasure out since her birth, but to no success.
• Mr. Sir (Marion Sevillo): One of the counselors at Camp Green Lake, he is constantly eating sunflower seeds. He took up this habit after deciding to quit smoking. He is known to be rude and tough.
• Mr. Pendanski: Mr. Pendanski is in charge of group D at Camp Green Lake. Mr. Pendanski may seem friendly at first glance, but he is just as mean as the Warden and Mr. Sir. He is known to frequently single out Zero. When Zero has the shovel, he attacks Mr. Pendanski with it.

Town of Green Lake

• Katherine Barlow (Kissin' Kate Barlow): Katherine Barlow is a sweet and intelligent woman who teaches in a one-room school house on Green Lake one hundred and ten years before Stanley arrives at Camp Green Lake. She falls in love with Sam, a man who sells onions in the town. Although the rest of the white people in the town are racist and enforce rules that prohibit black people from going to school, Kate, who is white, does not care about the color of a person's skin and she loves Sam for the person that he is. When Kate and Sam kiss, the angry townsfolk kill Sam and destroy her beloved schoolhouse. Kate is devastated by Sam's death and becomes Kissin' Kate Barlow, one of the most feared outlaws in the West. She always leaves her mark by kissing the bodies of the men she killed; if she had only robbed them, she would leave them in the hot desert. She is the outlaw responsible for robbing Stanley Yelnats I (Stanley's ancestor). Moments after she is confronted by Charles "Trout" Walker and his wife Linda, who demand to know the location of her buried loot, Kate is bitten by a yellow-spotted lizard, and dies laughing, knowing the Walkers will never find her treasure. The lipstick tube that Stanley finds during his second week at Camp Green Lake was owned by Kate Barlow.
• Sam: Sam is an African-American farmer in the town Green Lake, Texas who grows onions. He believes onions are the cure to everything and makes many remedies from onions. He also has an immense love for his donkey, Mary Lou. His relationship with Kate begins when he exchanges his onions for some jars of peaches. He is murdered in cold blood by Charles "Trout" Walker. His death is implied to have set a curse upon the lake, causing the rain to stop coming and the lake to dry up.
• Charles "Trout" Walker: Charles "Trout" Walker is an extremely spoiled son of a rich family in Green Lake. He gets upset when Kate denies his request to date her. This adds on to the reason of causing him to lead the townspeople to burn down the schoolhouse and kill Sam. His nickname Trout comes from his foot fungus that causes his feet to smell like dead fish. After Kate leaves to become an outlaw, he marries Linda Miller but his family loses everything after the lake dries up. He is The Warden's grandfather, who upon his death, opens up the juvenile detention camp to increase the efficiency of finding Kate Barlow's hidden treasure.
• Stanley Yelnats I: Stanley Yelnats I is the son of Elya Yelnats as well as the great-grandfather of Stanley Yelnats IV. He was the one whose treasure was stolen by Kate Barlow while he was moving from New York to California. He is known to have survived by climbing to the top of a thumb-shaped mountain (God's Thumb) which happens to be Sam's old onion field.

Mid-1800s Latvia

• Elya Yelnats: Elya is the great-great-grandfather of Stanley. He is often referred to as his "No-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather", constantly being blamed for everything that goes wrong in Stanley's life. He is considered to be the reason why the Yelnats family has such bad luck. After he fell in love with the woman in Latvia, he travels to America, forgetting to fulfill the promise he made to an old woman named Madame Zeroni. This causes generations of bad luck to trickle down the Yelnats family tree. However, he does pass down an important song that Madame Zeroni taught him in Latvia.
• Madame Zeroni: Madame Zeroni is the great-great-great-grandmother of Hector Zeroni (Zero). She is great friends with Elya Yelnats, and she gives him a pig. Because Elya breaks his promise of carrying her to the top of the mountain, she is considered to be the one who put a "curse" on the Yelnats family.
• Myra Menke: Myra is the most beautiful girl in the Latvian village of Elya and Madame Zeroni. Madame Zeroni considers her inadequate. Myra's father promised to award her hand in marriage to whichever suitor can raise the fattest pig. When the pigs were the same size, Myra asked Elya and Igor Barkov to guess a number between 1 and 10, showing her inability to make her own decisions. Upon realizing this, Elya allowed Myra to marry Igor.
• Igor Barkov: Igor was Elya's competitor for the hand of Myra Menke. He was already old and fat, but was a successful pig farmer.

Minor characters

• Mr. Yelnats (Stanley Yelnats III): Mr. Yelnats is Stanley's father. He is an inventor and quite smart, but extremely unlucky. He attempts to discover a way to recycle old sneakers and because of this, the Yelnats' apartment smells bad. However, he eventually discovers a cure to ridding foot odor and is able to hire a lawyer, Ms. Morengo, to get Stanley out of Camp Green Lake.
• Mrs. Yelnats: Mrs. Yelnats is Stanley's mother. She does not believe in curses but always points out the terrible luck that the Yelnats have.
• Barf Bag (Louis): A "camper" who left Camp Green Lake before Stanley arrived. He deliberately got a rattlesnake to bite him in order to be hospitalized.
• Clyde "Sweet Feet" Livingston: A famous baseball player whose shoes Stanley is accused of stealing. He has the same foot fungus as Trout Walker, and later sponsors Mr. Yelnats' Sploosh foot odor cure.