Hoot

by

Carl Hiaasen

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Hoot makes teaching easy.
One of the novel’s antagonists, Dana is an older bully at Trace Middle School who rides the bus with Roy. He’s huge, strong, and smokes cigarettes, though he’s not very smart. And because he’s terrified all the students at Trace Middle with his violent and incessant bullying, nobody is brave enough to report him—so therefore, as far as the administration is concerned, Dana isn’t actually a bully. Dana targets Roy specifically, though this never ends well for Dana: Roy is small and spry enough to dodge many of Dana’s hits, and Roy even ends up breaking Dana’s nose on accident. Ultimately, Dana gets his comeuppance when Roy tricks him into trying to break into the construction trailer at the Mother Paula’s construction site. Dana is arrested for vandalizing the site, and because he has a previous criminal record, he’s incarcerated at the local juvenile detention center.

Dana Matherson Quotes in Hoot

The Hoot quotes below are all either spoken by Dana Matherson or refer to Dana Matherson. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Conservation and the Natural World Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

Roy gasped.

“Whassamatter, cowgirl? Had enough?”

This was Dana, hissing in Roy’s right ear. Being the new kid on the bus, Roy didn’t expect any help from the others. The “cowgirl” remark was so lame, it wasn’t worth getting mad about. Dana was a well-known idiot, on top of which he outweighed Roy by at least fifty pounds. Fighting back would have been a complete waste of energy.

Related Characters: Dana Matherson (speaker), Roy Eberhardt, Mullet Fingers/The Running Boy, Beatrice Leep/The Girl
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

“Matherson is the menace! He hassles all the smaller kids on the bus.”

“Nobody else has complained.”

“Because they’re scared of him,” Roy said. Which was also why none of the other kids had backed up his story. Nobody wanted to nark on Dana and have to face him the next day on the bus.

Related Characters: Roy Eberhardt (speaker), Miss Hennepin (speaker), Dana Matherson
Page Number: 19
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

In addition to a fear of getting caught, Roy had serious qualms about trying anything illegal—and there was no dodging the fact that vandalism was a crime, however noble the cause.

Yet he couldn’t stop thinking ahead to the day when the owl dens would be destroyed by bulldozers. He could picture the mother owls and father owls, helplessly flying in circles while their babies were being smothered under tons of dirt.

It made Roy sad and angry. So what if Mother Paula’s had all the proper permits? Just because something was legal didn’t automatically make it right.

Related Characters: Roy Eberhardt, Mullet Fingers/The Running Boy, Dana Matherson
Related Symbols: Owls, Bulldozers
Page Number: 180
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

He wasn’t in the mood to turn somersaults, though he couldn’t deny experiencing a sense of liberation. He was tired of being Dana Matherson’s punching bag.

And while he felt guilty about making up the bogus cigarette story, Roy also couldn’t help but think that putting Dana behind bars was a public service. He was a nasty kid. Maybe a hitch at juvenile hall would straighten him out.

Related Characters: Roy Eberhardt, Dana Matherson, Mrs. Eberhardt, Garrett
Page Number: 199
Explanation and Analysis:

The driver’s seat was gone!

Dropping the rock that he’d been carrying for protection, Curly dashed to the next machine in line, a backhoe. Its seat had disappeared, too.

In a snit, Curly stomped toward the third and last piece of equipment, a grader. Again, no driver’s seat.

Curly spat out a cuss word. Without seats, the earthmoving machines were basically useless. The operators had to sit down in order to work the foot pedals and steer at the same time.

Related Characters: Mullet Fingers/The Running Boy, Dana Matherson, Officer David Delinko, Curly
Related Symbols: Bulldozers
Page Number: 203
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

“We need a warm body, and the only one we’ve got is sitting in juvenile detention. So officially he’s our perpetrator, understand?”

Officer Delinko and his sergeant agreed in unison.

“I’m going out on a limb here, so you know what that means,” the captain said. “If another crime happens on that property, I’ll look like a complete bozo. And if I end up looking like a bozo, certain people around here are going to spend the rest of their careers cleaning dimes out of parking meters. Am I making myself clear?”

Again Officer Delinko and his sergeant said yes.

Related Characters: The Captain (speaker), Mullet Fingers/The Running Boy, Dana Matherson, Officer David Delinko, Curly, Chuck Muckle, Councilman Bruce Grandy, The Sergeant
Page Number: 219
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Hoot LitChart as a printable PDF.
Hoot PDF

Dana Matherson Quotes in Hoot

The Hoot quotes below are all either spoken by Dana Matherson or refer to Dana Matherson. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Conservation and the Natural World Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

Roy gasped.

“Whassamatter, cowgirl? Had enough?”

This was Dana, hissing in Roy’s right ear. Being the new kid on the bus, Roy didn’t expect any help from the others. The “cowgirl” remark was so lame, it wasn’t worth getting mad about. Dana was a well-known idiot, on top of which he outweighed Roy by at least fifty pounds. Fighting back would have been a complete waste of energy.

Related Characters: Dana Matherson (speaker), Roy Eberhardt, Mullet Fingers/The Running Boy, Beatrice Leep/The Girl
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 2 Quotes

“Matherson is the menace! He hassles all the smaller kids on the bus.”

“Nobody else has complained.”

“Because they’re scared of him,” Roy said. Which was also why none of the other kids had backed up his story. Nobody wanted to nark on Dana and have to face him the next day on the bus.

Related Characters: Roy Eberhardt (speaker), Miss Hennepin (speaker), Dana Matherson
Page Number: 19
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 15 Quotes

In addition to a fear of getting caught, Roy had serious qualms about trying anything illegal—and there was no dodging the fact that vandalism was a crime, however noble the cause.

Yet he couldn’t stop thinking ahead to the day when the owl dens would be destroyed by bulldozers. He could picture the mother owls and father owls, helplessly flying in circles while their babies were being smothered under tons of dirt.

It made Roy sad and angry. So what if Mother Paula’s had all the proper permits? Just because something was legal didn’t automatically make it right.

Related Characters: Roy Eberhardt, Mullet Fingers/The Running Boy, Dana Matherson
Related Symbols: Owls, Bulldozers
Page Number: 180
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 16 Quotes

He wasn’t in the mood to turn somersaults, though he couldn’t deny experiencing a sense of liberation. He was tired of being Dana Matherson’s punching bag.

And while he felt guilty about making up the bogus cigarette story, Roy also couldn’t help but think that putting Dana behind bars was a public service. He was a nasty kid. Maybe a hitch at juvenile hall would straighten him out.

Related Characters: Roy Eberhardt, Dana Matherson, Mrs. Eberhardt, Garrett
Page Number: 199
Explanation and Analysis:

The driver’s seat was gone!

Dropping the rock that he’d been carrying for protection, Curly dashed to the next machine in line, a backhoe. Its seat had disappeared, too.

In a snit, Curly stomped toward the third and last piece of equipment, a grader. Again, no driver’s seat.

Curly spat out a cuss word. Without seats, the earthmoving machines were basically useless. The operators had to sit down in order to work the foot pedals and steer at the same time.

Related Characters: Mullet Fingers/The Running Boy, Dana Matherson, Officer David Delinko, Curly
Related Symbols: Bulldozers
Page Number: 203
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 17 Quotes

“We need a warm body, and the only one we’ve got is sitting in juvenile detention. So officially he’s our perpetrator, understand?”

Officer Delinko and his sergeant agreed in unison.

“I’m going out on a limb here, so you know what that means,” the captain said. “If another crime happens on that property, I’ll look like a complete bozo. And if I end up looking like a bozo, certain people around here are going to spend the rest of their careers cleaning dimes out of parking meters. Am I making myself clear?”

Again Officer Delinko and his sergeant said yes.

Related Characters: The Captain (speaker), Mullet Fingers/The Running Boy, Dana Matherson, Officer David Delinko, Curly, Chuck Muckle, Councilman Bruce Grandy, The Sergeant
Page Number: 219
Explanation and Analysis: