“Going to the woods is going home, for I suppose we came from the woods originally. But in some of nature’s forests, the adventurous traveler seems a feeble, unwelcome creature; wild beasts and the weather trying to kill him, the rank, tangled vegetation, armed with spears and stinging needles, barring his way and making life a hard struggle.” – John Muir
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
The moment Brian is hit with skunk spray, I found myself thinking: “It wasn’t that bad, was it?”
Maybe it was. I was a pre-teen messing around in the National Forest near our home in Colorado, and I walked home to an extended bath to remove the stink. Brian, on the other hand, was lost in the Canadian wilds and was pretty much in a fight for the first protein he had eaten in days. Perhaps it was a little different.
On the other hand, there was no doubt in my mind that the moose attack should have killed him. Kill him dead.
Reading Hatchet brought back memories, created new ones, and excited my imagination (and not just about getting sprayed by a skunk). A staple of middle school English class reading lists for decades, I picked it up again when my sixth-grader read it recently. J.K. Rowling may have made reading interesting to a new generation, but Paulsen is there when they turn to find another book, especially one that isn’t rooted in a fantasy world. Instead, Paulsen delivers an adventure that is real and entirely believable. The wild where Brian finds himself, alone and lost, is foreign, uncaring, and hostile. It is a scary and marvelous place.
I asked Abby what her favorite and least favorite parts were and, perhaps conveying a bit more about her own age and values than about the book, she chose the moment Brian *spoiler* was saved and the scene when he tried to kill himself from despair *spoiler*, respectively. On the other hand, the moment that brought me the most emotion was in *spoiler* the moment that he swung the hatchet to cut through the fuselage of the plane, knowing all the while that he was about to lose the very tool that had allowed him to survive. Close to that in emotion was the pain I felt at the betrayal by his mother of their family, and the division it caused between her and Brian’s father. But then, I am an adult, married, and partner in marriage myself. *spoiler*
Despite the emotions it at times invokes, Hatchet is a simply told story, even dull on occasion and perhaps that’s what lets it soar as a novel. Instead of getting in the way of itself, the reader is able to become Brian, to set himself in Brian’s increasingly tattered shoes, to find who he is when the wild is trying to kill him, all from the comfort of a warm, civilized home.
Hatchet
Brian's Saga #1
Young Adult
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
November 1st 1986
Paperback
192
Thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson, haunted by his secret knowledge of his mother’s infidelity, is traveling by single-engine plane to visit his father for the first time since the divorce. When the plane crashes, killing the pilot, the sole survivor is Brian. He is alone in the Canadian wilderness with nothing but his clothing, a tattered windbreaker, and the hatchet his mother had given him as a present.
At first consumed by despair and self-pity, Brian slowly learns survival skills—how to make a shelter for himself, how to hunt and fish and forage for food, how to make a fire—and even finds the courage to start over from scratch when a tornado ravages his campsite. When Brian is finally rescued after fifty-four days in the wild, he emerges from his ordeal with new patience and maturity, and a greater understanding of himself and his parents.
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