| “ | No one ever says no to Trout Walker. | „ |
| ~ Trout's childish response when Kate Barlow rejects him. |
| “ | I ain't gonna kill you, but by the time I'm finished with you, you gonna wish you was dead! | „ |
| ~ Trout's sadistic response when he holds Kate Barlow at gunpoint. |
Charles "Trout" Walker is the overarching antagonist of Holes. He was the rich, greedy owner of Camp Green Lake, which was passed on to him. When Katherine Barlow rejects his offer for love, and ends up dating Sam, a kind-hearted farmer, he spitefully kills him, causing Katherine to go insane and become Kissin' Kate Barlow. Years later, he wastes all of his fortune and forces his family to dig for the lost treasure for the rest of their lives, leading to all the maltreatment several dozen teenage boys would experience from his granddaughter whom he'd abused.
He was portrayed by the late Scott Plank.
What Makes him a Hate Sink?[]
- He is a racist, egotistical and bigoted man who was born in a life of privilege. He never bothered learning how to act with basic decency.
- He's extremely obnoxious in class, bringing up boastful tangents about his father's wealth for no reason whatsoever. It's also questionable why he'd be undereducated in the first place if his dad could obviously have afforded his 19-year-old self the finest college tuition gold can buy (try figuring that one out).
- When he proposes to Katherine and she politely rejects his offer, he acts egotistically and childishly, trying to guilt-trip her into reconsidering by stating nobody says no to him. When she courteously rejects him once again, he walks away undignified and refuses to move on from this. He already gave her reasons to reject him since he was such an immature and disruptive student.
- Once a town citizen finds out about Kate and Sam dating, he angrily notifies the town and forms a mob to lynch the latter, taking advantage of the law prohibiting a black person from kissing a white woman. Even though he knows Kate rejected him before, and she was perfectly happy to date Sam, a very kind person, Trout still refuses to move on and lets his ego get the better of him. In an act of spite, he also burns Kate's schoolhouse down, leaving her jobless. Sam's tragic demise causes Kate to go insane and become the feared outlaw Kissin' Kate Barlow.
- Even though killing Sam was legal, it was an extremely unethical and bigoted homicide and Kate shooting the Sheriff of Old Green Lake for it is rightfully played for satisfaction.
- He is perfectly happy to kill animals for its own sake, as he ends up shooting Mary Lou, Sam's donkey, even though she did nothing wrong.
- Trout's immaturity and ego, as a result, causes all of the events from Holes to happen, bringing misery upon all people working at Camp Green Lake for a hundred years.
- Four years after the incident, he marries Linda Miller, one of Kate's old students, even though she only married him for his money, which dried up anyway. This further shows how shallow his "love" was for Kate.
- Made worse is that they first started getting to know each other when Trout was in his early twenties; doing the math, Linda must've been a little girl.
- Over time, he ends up wasting all of his fortune away, making his family impoverished, and resorted to holding Kate at gunpoint to try to uncover the treasure, which causes her to commit suicide to escape further torture from him. He says he'll make her wish herself dead, which is ironic because he's the reason she already has a death wish anyway.
- When Kate refuses to give the location of the treasure and commits suicide, he orders his family to unsuccessfully dig for the treasure for decades. This actually means Camp Green Lake's very existence is his fault as his abusiveness leads to everything his granddaughter, the Warden, ends up doing wrong (even though it's still her own fault as she was a callous sadist who was old enough to make her own life choices). He ends up dying penniless off-page/offscreen because of his incompetence, as he should.
- While Holes has multiple characters who are flawed people in general and have some sort of redeeming qualities for their actions (such as the Warden being slightly tragic and Mr. Sir being moderately comedic and Madam Zeroni having a minor excuse to take her bitterness out on Stanley Yelnats II and anyone who came after), Trout possesses none of these and exists solely to provide misery to all of the other characters.
Trivia[]
- Cementing his Hate Sink status, Word of God noted how Trout had no desire to learn and came across as someone who took pride in his low intelligence.
- He is one of three Hate Sinks from Holes alongside Dr. Pendanski and the Sheriff of Old Green Lake.
External links[]
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 Hate Sinks
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