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Chapter 17
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Hoot, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Conservation and the Natural World
Bullying and Corruption
Morality, the Law, and Protest
Parenting and Support
Friendship
Summary
Analysis
Around midnight, Curly regales Officer Delinko with his tale about catching Roy earlier (though he doesn’t give Roy’s name). Both men are sure the real vandal is still on the loose for various reasons, none of which they share with the other. When Officer Delinko asks where the attack dogs went, Curly says they went back to Berlin and says he’s going to bed. He warns Delinko not to fall asleep tonight. Blushing, Delinko begins to walk the property. He brought five thermoses of coffee and amuses himself by daydreaming about becoming a detective. As he dreams about his unmarked detective’s car and a shoulder holster, Delinko trips and somersaults—he stepped in another owl burrow.
It’s worth noting that Curly and Delinko remaining at the site overnight does acknowledge that plenty of people believe that the Mother Paula’s vandal is still out there. Still, Delinko in particular remains in a moral gray area: he’s going along with keeping Dana in custody while also continuing to search for the real perpetrator. And his focus remains, as ever, on moving up in the ranks. Symbolically, it suggests the owls might get in the way of that dream when Delinko trips in the owl burrow while daydreaming about it.
Themes
Officer Delinko’s embarrassed muttering gets an unexpected response: a “Heh.” Delinko waves his flashlight around as the sound persists. Finally, he points his flashlight down and in the owl burrow is a baby owl. It opens its beak expectantly. The bird is so perfect and fascinating, Delinko laughs, dims his flashlight, and tell the owl he won’t hurt it. Overhead, Delinko notices the owl parents circling and making anxious noises. He backs away and watches them disappear into the burrow—and he backs into a bulldozer. Delinko doesn’t notice the bulldozer is missing its seat. Instead, he looks from the bulldozer to the owl burrow, realizing for the first time what will happen to the owls if he does his job right.
Just like Roy earlier in the novel, Delinko finally understands that developing the site into a pancake house means that the owl burrows will be destroyed—and this baby owl, perhaps, will die in the process. While Delinko has seemed appreciative of nature before, the baby owl is also framed as unusually cute and engaging. It’s the fact that the owl is so small, adorable, and clearly in need of protection that causes Delinko to realize that he has a responsibility to protect it—and that perhaps, doing his job “right” means letting the vandalism continue.
Themes
Mr. Eberhardt was working late Monday night, so Roy didn’t get to tell him about the missing Mother Paula’s building permits. On Tuesday morning, Roy is shocked when he sits down for breakfast and sees the newspaper ad announcing the groundbreaking ceremony the following day at noon. Dejected, Roy abandons his cereal. Mr. Eberhardt offers Roy his newspaper—it’s current events day in Mr. Ryan’s class—and Mrs. Eberhardt offers to drive Roy to school. Roy refuses, but he asks to borrow her camera for a school project. Since he’s early, he then jogs all the way to Beatrice’s house. Beatrice claps a hand over Roy’s mouth when she opens the door to his knocking and leads him to the bus stop.
Though Roy seemed hopeful yesterday, learning about the groundbreaking ceremony tells him that he is, potentially, out of luck. Still, Roy remains committed to his cause and is even willing to lie to his parents again to hopefully save the owls—it’s almost certainly a lie that he needs the camera for school. Once more, Roy compromises on what he’s been taught is right and wrong in order to accomplish what he knows is right (that is, saving the owls).
Themes
Sure enough, Beatrice didn’t break a tooth in a fall—she broke it biting a ring off Lonna’s toe. The ring contained a topaz stone that Beatrice’s mother left, and Lonna stole it from Leon. Roy is shocked, but Beatrice asks what’s going on that has Roy so upset. She shakes her head when Roy shows her the paper and isn’t sure if Mullet Fingers knows about the groundbreaking ceremony yet. She explains that things got really bad on Sunday: Mullet Fingers was chatting with Leon and waiting for Beatrice to get him clean clothes when Lonna showed up and threw a tantrum. Mullet Fingers ran away, Lonna and Leon got in a huge fight (Leon wants Mullet Fingers to come home, but Lonna said Mullet Fingers is “a bad seed”), and things are still tense. Beatrice says she’ll keep sleeping at home, though; it makes Leon feel better.
It’s framed as a bit of a tragedy that Beatrice so easily minimizes Lonna’s inappropriate behavior. This shows Roy how unfortunately common it is for Lonna to be rude to Beatrice, and how common it is for Beatrice to have to actually fight back against her stepmother. It’s even more tragic, then, as Beatrice explains how the fight over the weekend came to pass. Leon reads as well-meaning but impotent, which is certainly better than Lonna but still leaves Beatrice functionally alone. In many ways, his behavior makes Beatrice the only real adult in the house—especially since she implies that Leon essentially counts on her protection from his wife.
Themes
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Beatrice chats with her soccer teammates at the bus stop, but she joins Roy on the bus. They discuss what to do to help Mullet Fingers, and Roy says he knows how to plan this so they don’t end up in juvie. He shows her Mrs. Eberhardt’s camera and tells Beatrice his plan.
Though Roy isn’t above doing things that are morally and legally questionable (such as framing Dana), his main goal remains staying out of jail and on the right side of the law.
Themes
Miss Hennepin summons Roy to the office during homeroom to ask about what happened at the hospital with Mullet Fingers on Friday. In a flat tone, Roy shares he doesn’t know the running boy’s real name, but he’s not a student at Trace Middle. Clearly annoyed, Miss Hennepin says it’s illegal for kids to not go to school, and the police who search for truants are very good at their jobs. This makes Roy anxious, but he stays silent. Miss Hennepin refuses to believe that Roy kindly let the boy use his name to get treatment for nasty dog bites, but she lets Roy go anyway.
Miss Hennepin seems to view most, if not all, kids as mean and selfish. But interestingly, she also seems to recognize that Roy isn’t like that, at least not entirely. So while she doesn’t believe he did a purely altruistic thing in getting Mullet Fingers help at the hospital, she does try to use how much he cares about Mullet Fingers staying away from law enforcement to intimidate Roy.
Themes
During lunch, Roy borrows Garrett’s bike and rides to the junkyard. Mullet Fingers reads the newspaper announcement calmly and refuses to let Roy and Beatrice help. He doesn’t believe Roy when Roy pulls out Mrs. Eberhardt’s camera and says they can stop construction altogether if they can just get one picture of an owl. Skeptical, Mullet Fingers shoves Roy out of the ice cream truck and says he doesn’t need help. But when Roy turns around, Mullet Fingers is still holding the camera. Roy tells Mullet Fingers to keep it, trying hard not to cry.
Whether Mullet Fingers will go along with Roy’s plan isn’t entirely clear at this point. However, note that he is trying to be noble and help keep his stepsister and friend out of trouble; this is why he says, at least, that he won’t let Roy help. Roy’s plan presumably centers on proving that the owls indeed exist at the construction site—implying that it is illegal to develop land where owls are nesting.
Themes
Though there are several things in the newspaper that would make great subjects for current events, when it’s Roy’s turn to speak to Mr. Ryan’s class, he tells them that Coconut Cove is getting a Mother Paula’s Pancake House. He says that he was as excited as anyone else—until a friend took him to the building site and showed him a tiny burrowing owl. Gently, Mr. Ryan says this doesn’t sound like current events, but Roy says it is: they’re going to start bulldozing tomorrow after a big party. The adult owls might survive, or they might stay in their burrows and die with their babies. Roy says it’s not legal: the owls are protected and it’s illegal to disturb burrows without special permits. The file is missing from city hall, and the foreman has lied to Roy that there aren’t any owls on the property.
Initially, Mr. Ryan seems to operate on the assumption that “current events” don’t happen close to home. But as Roy explains what’s going on with the owls and the pancake house, he makes the case that current events are happening everywhere—and that it’s important to care about what’s going on in one’s community. He also very clearly lays out why it’s important to care about the owls, both in a legal sense and a moral sense. It’s illegal to disturb the burrows, but he also insists that it’s immoral to kill baby owls just so Coconut Cove suburbanites have yet another chain restaurant.
Themes
Roy says he’s going to the groundbreaking tomorrow at lunch. Mr. Ryan notes that students can’t leave school, so Roy says he’ll get a note from his parents. Mr. Ryan smiles and says that’s great. In closing, Roy says that they read in class about ordinary people who fought for what they believed in. The owls are tiny and everyone likes pancakes, but what’s happening is wrong.
Again, Roy makes the case that current events do indeed happen close to home: as he notes, “ordinary people” fight for what they believe is right all the time. With this, he insists that peaceful protest—which in the U.S. is a right guaranteed in the constitution—is both an effective and necessary way to create change and fight for what’s right.
Themes
