Hatchet:By Gary Paulsen
Summary:
Hatchet is a Young Adult Fiction Story about teenager’s struggle of survival in Canadian wilds. Through the story author shares the journey of triumphs and trials of an adolescent coming to age where he discovers his inner strength and overcomes his physical and psychological challenges to evolve as young confident, responsible and independent adult ready to embrace world on his own. The author narrates the story from third person perspective divulging deepest thoughts and emotions of Brian to the reader when he is lost in wilderness for a span of 54 days or approximately two months The story doesn’t explicitly shares the time and exact place of the incident because Brian is very lost in the wilderness but we can broadly infer through various cues dropped in the book that Brian boarded the plane from Hampton and headed towards the oil fields in North Canada where his father worked .Brian's plane comes down somewhere in the North Woods, a vast area that covers much of central Canada . The plane steered off the course towards northwest instead of north when the pilot bumped the wheel crashing in the middle of the L shaped lake. So we assume the entire story unfolds in North Woods Canada.
Brian Robeson is the Protagonist who comes of age after crashing in the Canadian wilderness. Natural Elements like forest and all its dangers and Brian himself is the Antagonist Brian must call on all of his strengths and intelligence to survive the challenges thrust upon him. The mood in the beginning of the story is sad mixed with frustration when Brian is bewildered by the loneliness of his physical surrounding in the wilderness and in his heart because of his parent’s recent divorce and is frustrated and blaming others for his desolate situation."If his mother hadn't begun to see him and forced the divorce, Brian wouldn't be here, now (Pg23 Chapter 6)." In the middle of the story we see the mood becoming fearful when Brian’s faces the physical challenges of nature and struggles for survival and at one point even contemplate suicide. The mood becomes positive when Brian’s slowly starts acclimatising and embracing his situation and overcoming his physical and mental challenges. We admire his tenacity for survival as he draws on his inner strength to become strong and independent. There are multiple conflicts that plays in this story till the end with Protagonist sorting
Conflict:
Man Vs Nature -Brian in conflict with nature wilderness is most prominent . "So fast, he thought. So fast things change. When he'd gone to sleep he had satisfaction and in just a moment it was all different. He grasped one of the quills, held his breath, and jerked. It sent pain signals to his brain in tight waves, but he grabbed another, pulled it, then another quill. When he had pulled four of them he stopped for a moment. The pain had gone from being a pointed injury pain to spreading in a hot smear up his leg and it made him catch his breath (pg31,chapter 8)."
Man Vs Others – Brian harbours resentment against his parents, the pilot , the lawyers who handled the divorce of his parents blaming them for his current situation. If his mother hadn't begun to see him and forced the divorce, Brian wouldn't be here, now (Pg23 Chapter 6).
Man Vs Self: Brian is internally struggling with himself harbouring the secret of her mother’s affair and withholding the information from all
"Look, can't we talk this over? Can't we talk this out? Can't you tell me what's bothering you?" And there were the words again. Divorce. Split. The Secret. How could he tell her what he knew? (pg4 Chapter1 )."
"THE MEMORY was like a knife cutting into him. Slicing deep into him with hate. (pg12 chapter 4)."
Plot
The plot starts with protagonist Brian Robeson on his way to visit his father, who works in the Canadian oil fields just a month after his parent’s divorce. "He was thirteen and the only passenger on the plane with a pilot named—what was it? Jim or Jake or something— who was in his mid-forties and who had been silent as he worked to prepare for take-off. In feet since Brian had come to the small airport in Hampton, New York to meet the plane—driven by his mother—the pilot had spoken only five words to him (pg 1 Chapter 1). "
"The bush plane crashes in the lake in Canadian woods after the pilot suffers the stoke, steering off northwest from its chartered course stranding Brain amidst nowhere with a realisation that he may not easily be found. After crash-landing, Brian finds himself in an unfamiliar situation. My name is Brian Robeson and I am thirteen years old and I am alone in the north woods of Canada (Pg 18 Chapter 5)"
He is alone with nothing except the clothes on his back and the hatchet his mother’s parting gift, connected on his belt. . Fighting hopelessness despair and yearning for good food, for 54 days Brian survives in the Canadian wild, eating berries, fish, turtle eggs, and wild birds. "He would have run all the way, in panic, but after he had gone perhaps fifty yards his brain took over and slowed and, finally, stopped him. If the bear had wanted you, his brain said, he would have taken you. It is something to understand, he thought, not something to run away from. The bear was eating berries.(pg.29,chapter7).He creates fire with the spark from his hatchet, and builds a shelter out of the resources around him. "There could be fire here, he thought. I will have a fire here, he thought, and struck again—I will have fire from the hatchet (.pg 33 chapter8)". Alone in the wild, Brian faces swarms of insects, wild animals like Bear, Porcupine, Skunk, female moose etc and severe storms but, most of all, he faces the turmoil of hiding the secret of his mother’s affair and blames himself and his mother for his tumultuous situation While he may have found a way to survive, it was not without trials and tribulations. Brain even tried to commit suicide and fails when he missed catching the eye of the plane passing overhead losing all hopes and giving up. His failure to end his life enthuses hope for survival. He slowly accepts his new reality and makes peace with himself and his surroundings. He draws on his inner strength and past learning from his parents and teachers to fight despair maintain positivity and build endurance learning life skills day by day for survival. He begins to enjoy and appreciate his new found independence and self-reliance and infacts envisage spending his life in woods. "He was not the same now—the Brian that stood and watched the wolves move away and nodded to them was completely changed. Time had come, time that he measured but didn't care about; time had come into his life and moved out and left him different.(pg46 chapter13)"
"But hope in his knowledge. Hope in the fact that he could learn and survive and take care of himself. Tough hope, he thought that night. I am full of tough hope.(47 chaper 13)."
Climax
The climax of the story occurs when Brian finally finds a way into the tail of the plane after a tornado dislodges it from the bottom of the lake. Within it are the emergency survival kits which he referrers as “treasures” and believes he will need to continue his life in the woods of Canada. Brian’s brings back the bag and unpacks its content and finds food supplies, gun and an emergency transmitter that he fingers around but appears to have been ruined in the crash. He decides to celebrate and begins rehydrating a freeze-dried meal and cooking it over the fire, which he lights using a butane lighter from the pack. Just as the meal is ready, a small plane lands on the lake and glides across the water to the beach where Brian is sitting in front of his shelter. The pilot explains that he received the signal from the emergency transmitter that Brian had inadvertently left on.In a brief epilogue, Brian's parents do not get back together, but Brian is forever changed by his experiences at the lake. He never tells his father why his mother wanted the divorce. "That, he thought, that is just fine. Just fine. He got more lake water and mixed another one and drank it fast, then a third one, and he sat with that near the fire but looking out across the lake, thinking how rich the smell was from the cooking beef dinner. There was garlic in it and some other spices and the smells came up to him and made him think of home, his mother cooking, the rich smells of the kitchen, and at that precise instant, with his mind full of home and the smell from the food filling him, the plane appeared. He had only a moment of warning. There was a tiny drone but as before it didn't register, then suddenly, roaring over his head low and in back of the ridge a bushplane with floats fairly exploded into his life.(pg 67chapter 19)."
Thus we see at the end of story the Protagonist is a changed individual who is wise, mature with a new understanding and insight of the world and family around. It is a story of a Brains who confront both physical and psychological challenges in order to grow and discover himself and coming of age. "Brian had gained immensely in his ability to observe what was happening and react to it; that would last him all his life. He had become more thoughtful as well, and from that time on he would think slowly about something before speaking (Pg 68,Epilogue)".Along the way, readers discover themes of hope, perseverance, and self-realization in both Brian and themselves. "Brian had once had an English teacher, a guy named Perpich, who was always talking about being positive, thinking positive, staying on top of things. That's how Perpich had put it—stay positive and stay on top of things.(pg 19 chapter5)."
"I have to get motivated, he thought, remembering Perpich. Right now I'm all I've got. I have to do something.(pg 21 chapter 5)."
"HE COULD NOT at first leave the fire. It was so precious to him, so close and sweet a thing, the yellow and red flames brightening the dark interior of the shelter, the happy crackle of the dry wood as it burned, that he could not leave it. He went to the trees and brought in as many dead limbs as he could chop off and carry, and when he had a large pile of them he sat near the fire—though it was getting into the warm middle part of the day and he was hot—and broke them in small pieces and fed the fire. I will not let you go out, he said to himself, to the flames—not ever (pg36 chapter 10)."
Literary devices
There are several other literary devices used by the author in the story like foreshadowing to create suspense and anticipation. The pilot teaching him how to control the plane prepares us for him landing the plane himself “ "It's not as complicated as it looks. Good plane like this almost flies itself." The pilot shrugged. "Makes my job easy." He took Brian's left arm. "Here, put your hands on the controls, your feet on the rudder pedals, and I'll show you what I mean." Brian shook his head. "I'd better not." "Sure. Try it...(pg 3 chapter 1)"or the fact that his mother gave him a hatchet as a going away gift prepares the reader for Brian’s need for a basic tool to survive in the woods. "The hatchet was the key to it all.(pg 32 chapter 8).The author has used Irony to emphasise the passage and coming of age of Brian like its ironic that Brian drops the hatchet in the lake, because it is the one tool he cannot afford to lose."Without the hatchet he had nothing—no fire, no tools, no weapons—he was nothing. The hatchet was, had been him. And he had dropped it. He had to get the hatchet back. He had to dive and get it back.( Pg 62 Chapter18)" Another irony is Brian finally finds the survival kit even though he has learned on his own how to survive or gets rescued when he has accepted to live in woods."It was a strange feeling, holding the rifle. It somehow removed him from everything around him. Without the rifle he had to fit in, to be part of it all, to understand it and use it—the woods, all of it (pg 66,chapter19)"