Gary Paulsen's Hatchet And The Rest Of The Brian Saga

Gary Paulsen: Brian Saga Gary Paulsen has lived an exciting life, from traveling with a carnival to joining the Army at seventeen to surviving two plane crashes and multiple moose attacks. In this paper I will go over how all of his life experiences affected how he wrote his book Hatchet and the rest of the Brian Saga.

Paulsen was born on May 17th in 1939 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His father was a career Army officer, who he didn’t meet until he was seven. He did not have such a good relationship with his mother as he spent his childhood hopping between relatives, until he left with his parents to the Philippines where his father was stationed. After two years he came home and ran away to join a carnival.

In an interview with TeachingBooks.net Paulsen was asked what inspired him to write Hatchet. At the beginning of Hatchet Brian is about to get on a plane to go to Alaska to visit his father after his parents got a divorce after his mother was seen with another man. This could be inspired by the fact that Paulsen never had a very good relationship with his parents. In

“I grew up hunting hunting and fishing in the north woods of Minnesota (...) And none of it had prepared me for the difference in moose- either in size or temperament” (Guts 41). While in the tundra, a five hundred pound cow moose appeared in the dead of the night and began attacking his dogs. He was woken up by what sounded like a scream. He stepped outside into the snow, barefoot in the middle of winter with his head lamp on and saw a moose stomping on his sled dogs. The only thing he had to defend his dogs with was a small axe that he used for chopping meat. Eventually, he warded off the moose and inspected his dogs. None had died, however two of them had suffered a broken leg and were out for the season. He says after that experience he has never been in the Alaskan wilderness without a