3 ideas
Stanley's great-great-grandfather Elya Yelnats promised to carry Madame Zeroni up a mountain to drink from a stream if she helped him win a bride. He broke the promise, and his family was said to be cursed for generations. The curse lifts only when Stanley, a descendant, carries Zeroni's descendant Zero up a mountain and sings him the family song, unknowingly paying off the old debt through his own act of loyalty.
In the 1800s Green Lake was a thriving lakeside town. When schoolteacher Katherine Barlow and Sam, a Black onion seller, kissed, the townspeople burned the schoolhouse and killed Sam, who was rowing on the lake.
The camp claims that digging a five-foot hole every day builds character, but the Warden is really using the boys to search for Kate Barlow's buried treasure. An institution's moral language can hide a private goal. The test is to watch what it rewards: here the Warden cares only about what turns up in the holes, not about how the boys change.