Gary Paulsen's Hatchet

703 Words2 Pages

The forest is wonderful place filled with splendor and joy, but if you’re stranded in a forest, that’s a different story. Gary Paulsen’s story Hatchet is a book about a thirteen year old boy who crash landed a plane (after the pilot had a heart attack) into a lake in the Canadian wilderness. This is a very good book, and in my opinion I think that the most important story element is setting. The setting teaches Brian many important lessons. For an example, Brian learned to not just read things, but to understand things from the Snapping Turtle. Furthermore into the reason Brian realized this when he said, “City boy with your city ways, sitting in the sand trying to read tracks and not knowing, not understanding.” Also the well know porcupine in the story gave Brian an idea on how to make sparks. Brian also in addition to the sparks got a leg full of sharp and pointy porcupine hairs for trying to kill the porcupine in the process. This made him realize that good comes from bad. Without the sneaky porcupine lurking into his shelter during the night, he wouldn’t have been able to make the …show more content…

He saw things so much differently than before. One of the things he saw differently was that Brian would just go to the supermarket to walk up and down the shelves, and marvel at all the different kinds of food they had. Even the food he didn’t like. It appears that since he always needed food in the forest, he now values each bit of food as if they were the most flawless diamonds in the world. Also in his normal life he noticed sounds he never noticed before, and he would react to even the slightest sounds as if it were a wild animal, just like he did in the forest. Than also he had a change in the forest. Brian had finally found true silence. Brian looked at his home differently, now knowing that there was always a sound. However amongst those silent birds he found true silence, quiet and bliss

Open Document