Analysis Of Gary Paulsen's 'Hatchet'

In Gary Paulsen’s novel Hatchet, thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson attempts to survive in the Canadian wilderness. On a trip to Brian’s father’s Canadian home, the pilot flying the plane suffers from a sudden heart attack, forcing Brian to take control of the aircraft before it crashes. After landing the plane in a lake in the Canadian wilderness, Brian learns how to survive in the forests until someone comes to rescue him. The wilderness makes up a majority of the novel’s setting. While a reader can view the wilderness’ effects on Brian as positively contributing towards his character, the forest ultimately harms Brian through numerous negative regards. The Canadian wilderness directly causes numerous problems and harmful events that

Once Brian goes through the process of learning how to start a fire, he thinks, “I have a friend - I have a friend now. A hungry friend, but a good one. I have a friend named fire” (Paulsen 93). This thought process of Brian to the inanimate fire as a friend can lead to negative consequences. One should consider anthropomorphic thinking like in this instance as a sign of the loneliness damaging Brian’s psyche and mental health. Another instance of the isolation brought on by the setting negatively affecting Brian’s thought process occurs when “he realized as he thought it that he had forgotten that they might come. The searchers” (Paulsen 102). Brian’s complacency with his surroundings only several days after being stranded in the forest is worrying. By forgetting about going home and accepting surviving in the wilderness as his life, Brian risks losing part of his humanity, societal manners, and forgetting customs from everyday life, and he could potentially become so attached to living in the woods that he might want to never return to his normal life and family. Several signs of the beginning of mental problems present themselves as a direct result of Brian’s isolation in the

An example of where one could extrapolate this notion from occurs after he begins to hunt wild game for food, Brian attempts to hunt what he calls “foolbirds.” Brian repeatedly tries to find and shoot several foolbirds with his handmade bow and arrows, but can never seem to spot them before they fly away. Eventually, he begins to reassess the situation and realizes, “I am looking wrong. More, more than that I am being wrong somehow - I am doing it the wrong way … He had been looking for feathers, for the color of the bird, for a bird sitting there. He had to look for the outline instead, had to see the shape instead of the feathers or color, had to train his eyes to see the shape” (Paulsen 141). After several more attempts and learning to analyze the entire situation, Brian shoots and kills a bird. Someone could read this section and believe that the skills Brian has acquired as a result of his time in the woods have made him develop as a character, yielding positive growth. However, Brian simply adapts to his surrounding to survive, and by becoming more proficient in living in the wilderness, he inversely loses his skills for existing in regular society. As displayed when, “propping the hatchet in the crack of the rock wall, he had pulled the head of the spear against it, carving a thin piece off each