Prominent Antagonists: Kissin' Kate Barlow
From Louis Sachar's book and movie "Holes"
Image copyright: TheBeazKneez on Etsy.
Recently, the United States celebrated the Fourth of July, commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence against Britain on that day in 1776 and the official founding of the United States of America. This Independence Day, I wanted to spotlight a quintessentially American figure: the wronged woman turned outlaw. Enter Kissin’ Kate Barlow from Louis Sachar’s 1998 book and 2002 movie Holes.
Holes
Holes follows the misadventures of Stanley Yelnats, a 14 year-old boy who is wrongfully accused of stealing a pair of shoes and is sent to Camp Green Lake, where juvenile delinquents are forced to dig holes 5 feet wide and 5 feet deep in an arid wasteland that used to be the lake. The story of the now dried-up Green Lake and the thriving town that used to exist on its shores is told through flashbacks. Through these flashbacks, we learn about many of its inhabitants, including Kate.
Katherine Barlow
110 years before the events of Holes, Katherine Barlow was a mild-mannered schoolteacher in the town of Green Lake. She was known for selling her spiced peaches, and fell in love with a black onion farmer named Sam. Katherine’s affection for Sam runs afoul of racist laws of the time and angers Charles “Trout” Walker, the spoiled son of the richest family in Green Lake, who wants Katherine for himself. When Sam and Katherine kiss, a racist mob led by Trout burns down Katherine’s schoolhouse. Katherine seeks out the sheriff, only to find him drunk. The sheriff asks Katherine to kiss him and says he gets drunk “Before every lynching”. She tells him, “If you’re going to lynch Sam [for kissing her], then you’d better lynch me, too, because I kissed him back.” The sheriff responds, “It ain’t against the law for you to kiss him, only for him to kiss you.”
Kate races to save Sam from being lynched. However, she arrives too late, and witnesses his murder at the hands of the townspeople.
Kissin’ Kate: An Outlaw is Born
The next day, Katherine arrives at the police station and asks the sheriff if he “still want[s] that kiss." She shoots the sheriff, leaves her lipstick mark, and rides off into infamy.
Kate Barlow goes on to become one of the most notorious and feared outlaws in the west, robbing “every bank from Hell to Houston”, according to Trout’s wife. One of her victims is Stanley Yelnats I, the son of an immigrant from Latvia. Kate and her gang kill the men he was traveling with and take his loot, but do not kill him. Stanley survives the desert by climbing a mountain he called God’s Thumb, where he was able to find water and the remnants of Sam’s onions. Kate buries the loot, and Stanley goes on to be the great grandfather of Stanley Yelnats IV, the main story’s protagonist.
Some time later, Kate is confronted by Trout Walker and his wife Linda, who used to be one of Kate’s students. They demand to know where the loot is and threaten to torture Kate if she will not tell them. Rather than submit to Trout once more, she lets herself be bitten by a venomous yellow-spotted lizard and dies laughing.
Betrayal by the Law
Kate is such a gripping character not only because of her dramatic transformation from kindhearted schoolteacher to hardened outlaw, but also because this change resonates as a drastic response taken by a citizen betrayed by the institutions she once trusted. As a schoolteacher, Kate only considered willingness to learn in her students, not race, socioeconomic background, or age. (In the movie, she is shown teaching adults how to read by night.) In other words, she understood her role as a public servant and was thus surprised when the sheriff neglected his by serving as an accessory to the lynching of an innocent man.
Kate’s disillusionment with the justice system leads to her becoming a criminal; why should she value innocent life and public order when the very justice system of her town had disregarded those principles? Her former, lawful means of earning a living had also been destroyed when the townspeople burned down her schoolhouse.
Although Kate was a prolific bank robber, her refusal to fight Trout and Linda for her stolen treasure at the end of her life indicates that her actions were driven by grief-begotten nihilism rather than greed. She allows herself to be bitten by a yellow spotted lizard after declaring, “I’ve been wishing I was dead for a long time.” It didn’t matter to her that she wouldn’t live a long life enjoying her treasure; it only mattered that Trout, once again, could not have what was hers.
Legacy in the Dust
In the present day, Stanley and Zero retrace and redeem Kate’s story; Stanley teaches Zero to read, Zero survives on Kate’s spiced peaches; later, he and Stanley are sustained by Sam’s onions atop God’s Thumb—just as Stanley’s ancestor was. Stanley uncovers Kate’s lipstick tube—her blood-red calling card—and the long-buried treasure that she stole from his great-grandfather. Like Kate, Stanley and Zero rebel against an unfair justice system and the Walkers by refusing to hand over the treasure to The Warden, finally returning it to its rightful owner. As a result, the curse on Green Lake brought by Sam’s death is lifted, and it rains in Green Lake for the first time in 110 years.