Zach Gee

Revised Blog Post

            In my book “Scat,” written by Carl Hiassen, Scat is about a panther in the swamp and trying to reunite it with it’s mother. On a field trip, Nick and Marta’s teacher, Ms. Starch disappears in a fire. She is saved by Twilly and agrees to help Twilly reunite the baby Panther Cub with its mother. Duane is framed for the fire and Nick and Marta try to find out what happened to Ms. Starch. Justice was served by many different people, even those who I didn’t expect to serve justice. As always, there were people who stood in the way of justice and caused injustice.    

The people who stand in the way of justice and serve injustice are the Red Diamond Oil Company. They are drilling oil illegally from state land and on the day of the school trip to the swamp they light a fire and try to frame Duane for it. During the fire, Ms. Starch disappears. When the fire department and police come to investigate, they find that it’s arson. Their first suspect is Duane because he has previously had an arson charge for lighting a billboard on fire. However, he lit the fire because it was advertising the flight that his mom took when she left him and his dad. The Red Diamond Oil Company stands in the way of justice by preventing Twilly and Ms. Starch from getting the cub back with it’s mother. They scared away the panther by trying to shoot it because they don’t want anyone to find their illegal drilling site.

Justice is served by Twilly, Marta, Nick, Ms. Starch, and Duane. At first Nick and Marta don’t know about the panther cub and Twilly’s mission of reuniting it with it’s mom, but on their way to finding out what happened to Ms. Starch, they stumble upon their operation . Twilly and Duane are the original two who try to help the cub, then Twilly saved Ms. Starch in the fire and she wanted to help. Twilly serves justice by messing with the Red Diamond Oil Companies illegal operation and helping the cub. Ms. Starch serves justice by taking care of the cub while Twilly tries to find the mother. Duane serves justice by using his tracking skill to help find the mother. Nick and Marta serve justice by helping the mother find it’s cub when the Red Diamond Oil Company tries to shoot it.  In the end they reunite the mother with it’s cub and shed light on the Red Diamond Oil Companies illegal operation.

I didn’t expect Duane and Ms. Starch to serve justice. This is because at the beginning of the book, Carl Hiassen depicts Ms. Starch as that mean teacher that no one likes. She the person who gives a lot of classwork and homework and you just don’t expect that person to be serving justice. I didn’t expect Duane to serve justice because at the beginning of the book I thought he was just a big kid who wanted to be left alone and never did his homework. Duane surprised me. Duane and Ms. Starch get into disagreements, and in one of these he eats her pencil. Ms. Starch helped take care of the cub and Duane was one of the main reasons for the reunion, so in the end they served justice.

The social injustice that this book brings to light is greed. The Red Diamond Oil Company was willing to kill a panther, drill illegally on state land, and to set a fire just to make a couple more bucks. I don’t this that this is right. There are more important things in the world than money. If you don’t have it, you don’t have it. This book did a good job showing that.