Hoot by Carl Hiaasen: Summary and Analysis

The young adult Hoot by Carl Hiaasen begins as a classic fish-out-of-water story. The protagonist, thirteen-year-old Roy Eberhardt, has moved with his family to Florida from Montana. Roy is friendless and alone: he is used to moving with his family, and expects to be the target of bullies like Dana Matherson at the bus stop. However, Roy's luck changes when he meets some new friends: the truant 'Mullet Fingers,' a boy who is determined to stop the environmental destruction caused by the construction of a new pancake house, and Mullet's stepsister, the tough jock Beatrice Leep. Roy finds a sense of purpose in his new home as he tries to defend the habitat of the tiny owls. However, Roy finds himself having to walk on the wrong side of the law to do so: Mullet lets air out of the construction worker's tires, booby-traps the toilets of the outhouse with alligators, and tears up the site during the night, much to the frustration of the construction foreman and the local police. The novel is very morally complex: Roy must learn to stand up for himself, even though all of society, including his parents, tells him that so long as Mother Paula's All-American Pancake House has a permit, the rights of the owls do not matter. However Mullet's techniques to save the owls are obviously problematic in their execution.

Hoot is really two stories: the story of Roy's evolving friendship with Mullet, and mystery of who is sabotaging the construction of the pancake house. When reading the book, the source of the sabotage at the construction site is fairly easy to figure out, based upon the obvious clues left in the book, and the fact that the story is mainly told from Roy's point-of-view. However, to make the film more cinematic, instead of beginning with Roy's first sight of Mullet, the film could show a faceless, nameless person, hidden from camera, engaged in the various renegade acts at the construction site. By allowing the film to have more of a mysterious and visual element, the story could be better-suited to the medium of film. Another option would be to begin the movie told from the point-of-view of the owls themselves, as they saw someone (Mullet) from their hiding-place, trying to destroy the construction site!