Hatchet
summary by: Miryah lee
In Hatchet written by Gary Paulsen, the main character Brian Robeson, a thirteen-year old boy, is stranded in the Canadian wilderness. In order to survive, Brian must overcome many obstacles with bravery and determination. In a series of intense events, Gary Paulsen demonstrates that each cause leads to a beneficial effect which aids Brian in his survival.
At the beginning, Brian is now on a plane to Canadian Oil Field to see his father, because his parent’s got a divorce, and Brian knows that it’s because of the secret. Before he left to get on the plane his mother got him a hatchet, so he had a tool for him to use with his father. Brian feels sad and anger about the divorce, which is why he is heading to Canada.
While in flight, Brian has realizes that the pilot has just had a heart attack. That he has to fly the plane, which is running out of fuel, so he decides to crash land the plane in the L shape lake. He crashes in the lake and swam to shore, black-outs.
When he wakes up, mosquitos attackes him, like vampires, which is what Brian calls them. He thinks about Perpich his teacher that always said ‘get motivated,’ so he decides to get motivate and goes looks for water for his thirst and to hold back his hunger.
After that, he wonders around near the lake, for shelter. He finds a shelter, a stone ridge, he got weak from hunger, he goes and looks for berries, which he finds and eats. The berries got him sick, so all his energy was drain, so he goes to look for better berries, raspberries, which he carries in his windbreaker, right before he heads back to his shelter, he sees a bear, which didn’t harm him, he heads back to his shelter and falls asleep.
While he was asleep, he heard a brushing sound in his shelter, which he kicks at the animal and gets quills in his leg which the animal, a porcupine. Brian throws his hatchet at the porcupine and it hit the stone and makes sparks, after that he has a dream about fire, sparks and bark wood makes fire. Brian attempts to make a fire which he successes, Brian says ‘I have a friend in fire!’.
The next night, he has woken up to a sound near his shelter in the sand, he goes to see in his curiosity, to find a trail which he follows and it leads to a spout which he digs up to find raw eggs, turtle eggs, which he eats raw and he says, ‘had to keep hoping.’
Later, he stores his eggs under the sand. Brian was doing thing or as he called it ‘things to do,’ which help him keep the depression off, later that day he notices that his body was changing with the weight and skin, and he’s starting to get that animal instincts were starting to become him.
A while later, he was trying to figure out how to catch a fish. Brian, a patient kid, spends hours working on the fish spear to catch the fish. He has to ‘invent’ a bow. Brian hears a engine of a plane, so he starts gathering wood for the signal fire and he starts hearing the sound of the engine change direction. After that, Br...
