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Chapter 5
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
The next morning, Roy asks his parents if it’s illegal for a kid to not go to school. Mr. Eberhardt explains that it is illegal and is called truancy. But they just make kids go to school rather than arrest them. Mrs. Eberhardt frets that Roy’s apology letter to Dana was too forceful and now he wants to drop out. Fearing that Mr. Eberhardt would have to report Mullet Fingers, Roy decides not to tell his parents why he’s asking about truancy.
Roy is surprisingly concerned about kids getting in huge trouble for objectively minor things like skipping school, at least compared to what Mr. Eberhardt may be investigating as part of his job with the DOJ. So, though Roy trusts his parents with a lot of things, he feels unable to ask them for help or guidance when it comes to Mullet Fingers.
Themes
Mr. Eberhardt changes the subject and reads from the newspaper about a police cruiser that was vandalized at a construction site on East Oriole Avenue. The officer in the car was asleep because he was on medication that causes drowsiness. Roy laughs. Mr. Eberhardt reads that vandals have also pulled up survey stakes and put alligators in portable toilets, and Mrs. Eberhardt is thrilled that Coconut Cove is getting a Mother Paula’s. Roy recognizes the construction site’s address: it’s near Beatrice’s bus stop, about where Roy saw Mullet Fingers running.
Roy is beginning to put the pieces together and suspect that Mullet Fingers (and his wild menagerie) might be involved with the vandalism at the construction site. Note too that at this point, Roy finds the vandalism humorous: it’s hard to feel too sympathetic for such a huge corporation, and it’s funny that a vandal can stop a big corporation by simply pulling up stakes. This is an early indicator that huge and seemingly powerful entities like Mother Paula’s aren’t as powerful as they might seem.
Themes
The police captain asks Officer Delinko if he’d like to add anything to the report. The captain informs Delinko that his name didn’t make it into the paper because he wouldn’t release it—and if he says Delinko had the flu and was on medication, that’s exactly what happened. Then, the captain puts the bill for cleaning up the squad car in Delinko’s file. Delinko offers to pay the car repair bill, but the captain says Delinko will be on desk duty for a month. As the meeting adjourns, the captain says Delinko will be fired if anything happens again, and the sergeant reminds Delinko that he can only drive to and from work in the squad car now. That’s okay; Delinko knows a route that will take him past the construction site morning and night.
The police captain tries to make it seem like he did Delinko a huge favor by keeping his name out of the newspaper. But really, the captain essentially uses Delinko’s mistake to lord his control over the younger officer and ensure that Delinko remains committed to doing his job to his superiors’ satisfaction. Intimidating and threatening to fire Delinko, in other words, is supposed to make Delinko more yielding and obedient. However, Delinko still maintains some of his curiosity—he’s not going to just give up on the vandal because he might be fired.
Themes
Fortunately, Dana is out of school again. Garrett suggests Roy run away and then shares that other kids are taking bets on how many times Dana is going to beat Roy up when he does come back. Roy just rolls his eyes. When Roy and Mrs. Eberhardt get home that afternoon, Mrs. Eberhardt answers the phone and Roy slips out of the house with a shoebox. He rides his bike to the Mother Paula’s construction site, where a bald man (Curly) races toward him, shouting about there being guard dogs tonight. Frightened, Roy pedals away, noticing thunder in the distance. It’s drizzling by the time Roy reaches the golf course and heads on foot into the pepper tree thicket. But when Roy reaches Mullet Fingers’s camp, the running boy isn’t there. The camp is gone, too.
That kids are taking bets not on if Dana will beat Roy up, but on how many times Dana will beat Roy up, speaks to how much Dana and his parents have been able to normalize Dana’s bullying—the students think it’s inevitable that Dana will beat Roy up. This again implicates the school’s administration, which has given in to the Mathersons’ threats. It’s a mystery what Roy has in the shoebox, but it seems as though Roy perhaps scared Mullet Fingers away from his campsite. Mullet Fingers doesn’t yet trust Roy.
Themes
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By now, it’s raining hard and Roy knows it’s unsafe to be on a golf course. Thinking of how worried Mrs. Eberhardt must be, Roy races for his bike—but his bike isn’t where he left it. Roy sits for a moment in a covered kiosk, but the weather doesn’t let up, so he ventures out into the storm. The streets are so flat that they’re already flooded. When the streetlights come on, Roy knows his parents will be really upset—he’s so late. But as Roy waits to cross the highway at West Oriole, Beatrice rides up behind him on his bike and asks what’s in the shoebox.
This passage highlights how close Roy is with his parents, and how much he wants to please and respect them. He doesn’t want them to worry, so he’s far more concerned about their emotional wellbeing than he is about his own safety being out in such a dramatic storm. It begins to look increasingly like Beatrice and Mullet Fingers are in cahoots, given that she insisted earlier the running boy didn’t exist and now stole Roy’s bike when he tried to visit Mullet Fingers’s camp.
Themes
