Hatchet
(Gary Paulsen)

Chapter One

Brian Robeson is thirteen-years-old, and he is flying from Hampton, New York to the woods of northern Canada. He is excited to be in a single-engine plane, and he is the only passenger, aside from the pilot of course. When Brian gets over his excitement he begins to think about his parents’ divorce and “the secret” that he knows. As Brian thinks about the divorce and all the fighting, he feels tears come to his eyes, but he holds them back; he does not want the pilot, who is possibly named Jim or Jake and who does not talk much, to see his tears. When the pilot sees Brian looking at the control panel in the plane he lets Brian fly the plane himself for a couple minutes. When Brian is done flying, he vaguely recalls the pilot mentioning some pain in his shoulder, and then he drifts back to thinking about the divorce.

Brian’s father does not want a divorce; it was his mother’s idea and his father has no clue why. The courts decided that Brian will live with his mother in New York during the school year and with his father in Canada during the summers. Brian is brought back to reality briefly when the plane jerks; it smells as though the pilot has passed gas and it seems as though his shoulder and arm are still hurting. Brian thinks about his parents again. Brian is bringing his father some equipment from New York to help him with his work; he is a mechanical engineer. Brian’s mother drove him to Hampton to get on the plane, and she knew something was wrong with him though he could not bring himself to tell her that he knows “the secret”. Before Brian got on the plane his mother gave him a hatchet to help him in the woods, which he attached to his belt. Brian again feels the plane jerk and is horrified to see the pilot fall out of his seat and see his eyes roll in the back of his head. Brian knows the pilot must have had a heart attack and is likely dead; he now needs to figure out what to do to keep himself alive one thousand feet in the air.

Chapter Two

After the pilot’s death, Brian goes into shock and finds himself entirely immobile. Brian finally realizes that the plane has been progressing on its own for the past few moments, and he must take control of it immediately if he wants any chance of surviving. When Brian looks at the controls he is mightily confused, but he sees a radio and decides to give it a try. When he reaches over to grab the headset from the pilot he accidentally bumps the wheel and has to right the plane. When Brian tries to use the radio he does not get into contact with anyone to any extent that would help him. Before he can get across any information that may be helpful, he loses service on the radio. For the rest of the time Brian is in control of the plane, he tries the radio again every ten minutes, but he is unable to get a strong enough signal to reach anyone. Brian tries to think of a way to land the plane successfully, without knowing how, but he does not have much time to think about it because suddenly the plane’s engine dies. Brian points the nose of the plane down toward the ground, and he vomits.

Chapter Three

Brian tries to collect himself and keep control of the plane to land it as smoothly as he can. He searches for water, thinking that landing in water would be his best chance for survival, but he does not see any; as the plane rapidly descends Brian vomits and screams with fear. The plane is coming down into a group of trees, and Brian is worried until he sees an L-shaped lake. As the plane goes through the trees the wings are snapped back toward the tail, and he is barreling through. When Brian lands in the lake, the dust and dirt from the floor of the plane and the bottom of the lake rush up into his face. Brian slams his head off the steering wheel, but he is alive; the windshield had been smashed on impact and Brian swims out of the hole that it left. When he gets out of the plane, he inhales a hefty gulp of cold water before he breaks the surface. He manages to get himself out of the water and onto land, though he is in rough shape; he passes out from pain and exhaustion.

Chapter Four

While Brian is lying on the shore of the lake, he is in a bit of a dream state where he remembers finding out about “the secret”. He and his friend Terry had been riding their bikes when Brian saw his mother sitting in a car that he did not recognize, kissing a man with blond hair. As Brian recalls his anger and hatred from that moment, it brings him back to reality. He takes in the wilderness around him and thinks about the plane crash and all of the details of the experience. He is in immense pain from the injuries that he sustained in the crash, and he soon falls asleep. When he awakes he is in a bit of a haze, and he starts to remember the details from the plane crash; Brian is amazed that he survived the crash, and then he remembers that the pilot was not so lucky. There are many mosquitoes in the area and they swarm Brian, leaving bites all over him, but this does not get him down; Brian realizes exactly how lucky he is to have survived something that in all probability should have killed him. Brian takes in his surroundings and listens to all of the sounds of the environment; soon he falls asleep once again.

Chapter Five

When Brian wakes again he is incredibly hungry and thirsty, as he has been drifting in and out of consciousness for what seems like a couple days. He drinks some water from the lake he landed in and gets sick from drinking too fast. Brian tries to grasp the fact that he is isolated in complete wilderness; he tries to tell himself that rescuers will come for him soon, and he finds this idea a little reassuring. Brian tries to motivate himself to persevere and recalls his English teacher, Mr. Perpich, always teaching his students the importance of maintaining a positive attitude in all situations. Brian takes in the silence all around him; he is not used to being surrounded by silence because there is no such thing as silence in New York. As Brian thinks about the crash and the chance of being rescued he remembers that he bumped the wheel when he was reaching for the radio and when he had to correct the plane he probably took it off course, which means that rescuers make take some time to find him. With this realization, Brian begins to panic a little because he does not have any food or shelter. He takes inventory of what he has: his jacket, shirt, pants, socks, and underwear, $20 in his pocket, and a hatchet. He tries to stay positive and decides to find food somewhere in his surroundings and build himself a shelter.

Chapter Six

Brian searches his mind for any knowledge of survival that he has. He recalls playing in the park with his friend Terry back home, which is where he wishes that he was right now. One time he and Terry pretended that they were lost in the woods and had to build a lean-to for survival. Brian looks all around for the perfect place to build his own lean-to, eventually settling on a spot with a nice overhang. As Brian begins gathering all of the materials he will need to form his shelte, r his hunger and thirst get the best of him, and he is quickly exhausted. He knows that he must find some food though he does not have a knife, a gun, or matches so he has to get creative. Brian goes wandering to find something edible, telling time by the sun and using the lake as a point to base direction on. After walking for a bit, Brian finds some small berries, thanks to some birds; he picks a bunch of berries and heads back to where he set up camp. Brian tries to start a fire for himself by rubbing some sticks together, but he is unsuccessful. Instead, Brian uses his hatchet to cut down some logs and branches which he uses to close in his shelter. When he is done, he has a fairly decent sized space to hole-up in, and he feels that although he is still hungry, alone in the wilderness, and has a lot left to do, he is much further along than he was when he crashed that morning.

Chapter Seven

Brian has a terrible dream about his mother than causes him to wake in the middle of the night. Just as he wakes with a start, he becomes violently ill, presumably from the berries he ate so many of. In his dream, he had vividly remembered what it was like seeing his mother kiss the man with blond hair. Eventually, Brian does fall back asleep, and when he wakes in the morning he takes a walk down to the lake. When Brian sees his reflection in the lake he is astonished at how unrecognizable he has become already; his face is swollen and red from bug bites and sunburn and his matted hair stands straight up. He cries out of self-pity for the first time since he crashed and then pulls himself together. Brian washes his face in the lake, and then sets out to find some more of the berries from the night before, which he is now calling “gut cherries”; when he finds them, he carefully sorts them into piles of ripe and unripe, so he does not make himself sick again. After separating the berries, Brian finds a bush of raspberries and finds himself looking at a black bear. Brian has a feeling that the bear is not going to hurt him but just in case he moves away slowly, not returning until she has moved on. He collects many raspberries and then heads back to his shelter. That night Brian eats many raspberries and falls asleep with his hatchet next to him, keeping the bear in mind.

Chapter Eight

Brian wakes in the middle of the night when he hears a strange noise and then he senses that he is not alone in his shelter. Brian throws his hatchet in the direction he thinks the intruder may be, and he feels a sharp pain in his leg; a porcupine is in Brian’s shelter, and it has stung him in the leg with its many quills. Brian begins to cry out of both pain and self-pity as he pulls the quills out of his leg. He cries until he has no more tears and eventually he realizes that crying is getting him nowhere; having pity for the situation he is in is not going to solve any of his problems. Brian falls back asleep, and he sees his father and Terry in his dream. Brian’s father mouths words to him but does not make a sound; he gets frustrated when he has something terribly valuable to tell Brian but cannot seem to get the words out. Terry steps in then and brings Brian to a park where they have a barbeque; Terry lights the fire and looks at Brian. When Brian wakes he has a hard time making sense of his dreams until he sees the sunlight gleam off of his hatchet like fire. Brian realizes that his father and Terry were trying to tell him how to make a fire. Brian strikes his hatchet against some rocks and sees sparks fly; he knows that somehow he will use his hatchet to start a fire.

Chapter Nine

Brian had thought that creating a fire with sparks would be easy, but it proves to be much more difficult than he had originally anticipated. He tries several different methods and materials including dried leaves, and even pieces of his twenty dollar bill, but still he has no luck. Brian finds a birch tree and peels off some of the bark to make a sort of fluffy nest in his hands that he hopes will fuel the fire, but all he is able to achieve is sparks. Brian racks his brain for every bit of information he knows about fires, and he realizes that what he is missing is one of the key ingredients: oxygen. As Brian lets the sparks drop onto the birch fluff he blows on the embers and after a few tries is successful in starting a fire. Brian continues to put kindling on the fire, and he cannot help basking in his accomplishment, very pleased with himself. Brian thinks that the fire serves as a friend to him to help keep away animals as well as the mosquitoes which have been biting him relentlessly. Brian is so pleased that he whoops aloud with joy, wishing that there was someone else in those woods for him to share his fire with. As Brian sits by his fire he wonders what his parents are up to at that exact moment; mostly he wonders if his mother is with the blond man he saw her kissing.

Chapter Ten

Brian is so pleased with the fire that he does not want to leave it, though he knows that he must keep moving to collect materials which will keep the fire going. Brian works extremely hard to ensure that he has enough wood and kindling to keep the fire going over night and also to keep it going in the coming days; when he is done collecting wood he is exhausted and falls right asleep. In the middle of the night, Brian is woken by a noise, but when he is sure that there is nothing inside of his shelter he quickly dozes off again. In the morning, Brian sees some tracks on the ground which head toward the lake, so he follows them. At the end of the tracks, Brian finds many eggs and sees that a turtle had come up on shore to lay eggs over the night. Suddenly it dawns on Brian that the eggs provide him with a substantial form of sustenance; much more substantial than anything else he has eaten thus far. Brian recalls his Uncle Carter eating raw eggs every morning; Brian decides that he will make himself do the same, though the taste is something that he has to work hard to overcome. Brian eats several of the eggs and brings the rest back to his camp, deciding that he will eat one egg every day. Brian wonders if people are searching for him and when he might be rescued. Brian builds a triangle of wood to set up a signal fire, so the rescuers will know where he is when they come for him.

Chapter Eleven

Brian fears that if he does not keep himself distracted and busy then he will fall into depression. He spends his time storing the remaining eggs, so other animals do not get to them, and so they do not get crushed, by keeping his camp clean, and by keeping his wood stacked. The tasks that Brian spends his time on are things that he once would have found to be tedious and a waste of time, but now they are the things that keep him sane. When Brian is drinking from the lake, he sees his reflection, and he notes how much he has changed just in this short amount of time; his body is lean and muscular and his skin is tanned. Brian also reflects on how much he has changed mentally since the plane crashed; he appreciates his surroundings and has become more observant of nature. Brian’s senses have become acutely keen to pick up on the sounds of the woods, and he realizes that his mind and body are working together in a way that they had never worked together before the crash. As Brian is standing atop a bluff, looking out at the lake, he is overwhelmed by the beauty of his surroundings. Suddenly Brian comes to the realization that the lake is full of fish which would serve as another food source for him. Brian looks into the lake and sees that there are many kinds of fish, and he tries to catch one with his bare hands, though he is not able to; he knows that he must make some sort of a spear.

Chapter Twelve

Brian builds a fishing spear out of whittled wood, which he split at the end to make two prongs. He spends many hours on this spear, being extremely careful to shape the end of the prongs into sharp points. Brian waits in the water for the perfect fish to come by, and when it does he plunges his spear at the fish, but he misses. He tries to throw his spear out into the water, but every time he makes a move the fish get spooked and swim away. Brian decides that what he must do is to build a bow and arrow which will launch the spear into the water. He searches near where he found the berries for some wood, and he sees a cluster of feathers fly by him, and he wonders what the bird might taste like. Brian finds the perfect type of wood to use for his bow when he hears a sound that sounds like a whining; when the sound gets louder and turns into a roar Brian knows that it is an airplane. Brian is sure that the plane is coming to rescue him, so he runs back to his camp and grabs a flaming log to light his signal fire with. Brian gets to the top of the ridge, and he lights a fire, but the plane turns away just as the fire is beginning to take off. Brian feels as though he will never be rescued now that the plane is flying away from him, because no one will come back to look for him again. Brian has no more hope and fears that he cannot survive without any hope of being rescued.

Chapter Thirteen

Brian is standing by the water watching, listening, and feeling the environment. He is not looking for fish, as per usual, but rather looking for one of the birds he saw before which he is now calling “foolbirds”. While he is looking for the birds, he gets a sense that something is near him and when he turns he sees a wolf sitting on a hill watching him. Brian is scared of the wolf, but he knows that wolf also calls the wilderness home and is just another part of nature. The wolf makes no moves to harm Brian and eventually moves along to join with its pack. Brian used to separate time in terms of “before the secret” and “after the secret” but now he refers to time in terms of “old Brian” and “new Brian”. Brian has been living in the wilderness for forty-two days, which to him is forty-two days since he was born again. The day the rescue plane failed to see him, Brian died a little inside and lost hope. That night, he lay in his shelter, and he let his fire go out; he wanted to die, and he saw no point in living if he was not going to be rescued. At dark that night, Brian went to the top of the ridge, where he had lit his failed signal fire, and he tried to take his own life by cutting himself with his hatchet, but he was unsuccessful. When Brian woke on the ridge the next morning he knew that he was done feeling sorry for himself and he has changed forever; never again would he let the thought of death into his life.

Chapter Fourteen

Slowly, Brian realizes that everything he does counts and mistakes happen. The biggest lesson and truth that Brian has learned thus far in his experience is that food is the number one necessity and is something that everything needs to survive, and, for those living in the wilderness, it is something that they must find for themselves. Brian has realized that in order to survive, possibly a very long time, he needs to have more than just a temporary shelter and a place to store his food. He realizes this after one night when he was sprayed by a skunk, which stole his eggs, and he was left blind for about two hours. From this experience, Brian learned that he must be able to keep his food, and himself, safe from predators. He knows that he must always be working to find food because no other animals in nature ever stop looking; there is no rest in the wilderness. After Brian was sprayed by the skunk he used logs to build a wall and a door for his shelter and more protection, even burying parts of the logs in the sand to give the shelter more support. Within the shelter, Brian builds a shelf for his food to keep it out of reach of any possible intruders, and he builds himself a ladder to help him to reach the food once he puts it up. Also, Brian builds an enclosure out of rocks in the lake where he will store fish once he catches it, so he does not have to worry about storing dead fish once he catches them.

Chapter Fifteen

Brian keeps track of time in his mind and based on his experiences, rather than by actual time; though he does keep track of the days that have gone by with markings on a stone by his shelter. In Brian’s mind, he remembers days such as the day of “first meat,” which is the day when he caught his first foolbird. When Brian had been living off of fish and berries, he had cravings for more substantial foods, especially meat. Brian decide that he must start catching the foolbirds though this proved much more difficult than he had anticipated; despite the fact that the foolbirds do not seem to be exceptionally bright, they fly extremely fast and are not easy to spot when they are not moving. Brian teaches himself to spot the outline of the sitting foolbirds, and he decides that he will use his homemade spear to catch them with because it allows him to lunge at the birds. Brian manages to catch the “first meat” by moving sideways, rather than coming at the bird straight on, and lunging at it at the last second possible with his spear. When it comes time for Brian to clean the bird he realizes that it is much more difficult than he imagined it would be, and he realizes that in his old life he never would have had to do such a thing because his mother had always cooked for him. Brian cooks the bird on a spit, which he turned into a sort of rotisserie over the fire. Brian is so anxious to eat that he pulls off a piece that has not fully cooked, and he is reminded that he must be patient. When the bird is done cooking Brian enjoys it more than he has ever enjoyed food in his life.

Chapter Sixteen

Brian recalls all of the events that have occurred since the plane crash, the “first days”. On “first arrow day” Brian managed to finally fly an arrow straight; on “first rabbit day” Brian hunted and killed his first rabbit using pretty much the same method he employed on the foolbirds. Brian is now capable of catching sufficient meat for himself and rotates between eating the birds and rabbit. He has become exceedingly adept at catching the foolbirds, to the point that he once caught one with his bare hands. Once, while Brian was washing his hands in the lake, he got the sense that something was near him and turned around to see a moose directly behind him. The moose attacked Brian and pushed him into the lake, then thrashed him around in the water which badly hurt Brian’s shoulder and ribs. Brian got out of the water and retrieved his hunting gear and foolbird from the shore before returning to his shelter. Brian is in a lot of pain and while he is trying to sleep he wonders about the attack. Brian is woken by a roaring sound in the middle of the night, and before he knows it a tornado touches down and destroys his tent and fire; the tornado is gone just as fast as it came. Brian is left out in the open with no shelter or fire for protection and is not able to fall back asleep; he cannot help but think of how much things have changed in just one day. In the morning, Brian takes in the damage, sees the pieces of his shelter scattered, and resolves to rebuild everything. He also sees the tail of the plane sticking out of the water and is saddened to think of the pilot lying dead inside the plane; he cannot think of the appropriate words of remembrance to say so he just concentrates on wishing the pilot peace.

Chapter Seventeen

Brian works extremely hard to get his shelter back to its former condition, and in the process, he collects more firewood, as well. Brian is exhausted after his hard day’s word, and he lies down inside of his newly rebuilt shelter to go to sleep. Suddenly Brian remembers the survival pack that the pilot had mentioned being in the plane, and he wonders what the pack might contain and if it could help him. Brian thinks he will try to retrieve the pack the next day and hopes that it contains tools or maybe even some food. In the morning, Brian eats some fish to give him energy for his journey into the plane and decides that he must take a raft out to the center of the lake to get into the plane. Brian has a hard time building the raft but is eventually successful in holding the logs together by weaving branches in between them. Moving the raft once it is complete it not easy, either, and by the time dusk comes, Brian knows that he must forgo the mission until morning, and he returns to his shelter. The next morning Brian takes the raft out to the center of the lake and prepares to enter the plane; he shudders when it occurs to him that he may see the pilot’s body.

Chapter Eighteen

Brian is not able to get into the plane as easily as he had hoped and he punches a hole in the side of it in frustration. Brian is pleased with his on strength and uses his hatchet to chop at the aluminum of the plane to make the hole bigger. Just as Brian has made some real headway on the hole in the side of the plane he makes the colossal error of dropping his hatchet into the water. It is several trips underneath the water before Brian finds the handle of the hatchet sticking out of the muddy bottom, which is much closer than he thought it would be. When Brian gets his hatchet back, he continues to work on the hole until it is large enough for him to crawl through. Once he crawls through Brian carefully maneuvers himself down into the cockpit where he retrieves the survival pack, which was wedged behind the seats. On his way back up to the hole Brian sees the face of the pilot which has been eaten away by fish. Brian vomits in the water and struggles to get himself and the survival pack to the surface. Brian is terribly tired when he gets out of the water; he drags himself and the survival pack to his shelter where he falls immediately into a deep sleep.

Chapter Nineteen

When Brian wakes in the morning, he checks out the contents of the survival pack. Inside the pack, he finds a sleeping bag, a sleeping mat, a knife, fishing gear, lighters, matches, cooking gear, a hat, a first aid kit, and a survivor rifle though he is not excited about the rifle because he feels it takes away from the connection he has made with nature. Brian admits that the rifle would make his daily life much easier, as would some of the other tools in the kit, but he has become accustomed to using the methods he taught to himself when he needed to survive and feels loyal to those ways. Brian has mixed emotions about the survival pack because he feels that many of the things it contains take away from the way of life he has come to appreciate, though others are engaging like the packets of freeze dried food that he found. Also, Brian found a transmitter, but he is unable to turn it on and realizes that it probably got damaged when the plane crashed. With the freeze-dried packs of food, Brian chooses one that he wants to feast on right away and decides to set the others aside. Just as Brian is preparing his feast he hears an engine and then he sees a plane come down and land right on the lake. The pilot tells Brian that he heard the signal from the transmitter, and he seems to at that moment realize he is standing in front of the boy that searchers have been looking for. Brian is amazed to see the pilot and simply introduces himself and offers the man something to eat.

Epilogue

Later on Brian learns that the pilot who found him was not a rescuer but rather a fur buyer, who was looking for Cree trapping camps. During Brian’s time in the wilderness, he lost a lot of weight and it takes many years for him to put it back on. He maintains some of the positive qualities that he picked up while struggling to survive, such as his tendency to be particularly observant and also his thoughtfulness. When Brian returns home, and for many years after, food becomes something that he is continually amazed by and appreciative of. When he first returned reporters wanted to ask him questions and write stories about his adventure, but soon their interest wanes and they leave him alone. Brian has many dreams about his time in the woods and most of them are quite pleasant, though he knows that if he was not rescued before winter his time would have been quite difficult. Brian’s parents were supremely happy when he was returned home safely, and they even tried to rekindle their relationship for a brief time, though eventually they parted ways once again. Despite often toying with the idea of revealing “the secret” to his father, Brian never does.