City News
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
Review by Louise
In the novel, Hatchet, the young hero in the story, thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson, survives 54 days, almost three months, in a grim Canadian wilderness with only a hatchet to help him. Brian’s adventures are based on the American author, Gary Paulsen’s own early years, as he was a boy-survivalist and adventurist his entire life.
The story begins when Brian is flying in a Cessna 406 bush plane, on his way to stay with his father for the summer. His father is a mechanical engineer, who works in the oil fields of Northern Canada. He is angry with his mother because she has divorced his father. He has a hatchet hooked to his belt that his mother gave him after they arrived at the airport, but he thinks the hatchet is silly. Brian is a city boy who is very nervous about spending time in the wild. The pilot senses Brian is unhappy, and to cheer him up, offers to teach him how to fly the plane. This lesson saves Brian’s life when the pilot has a heart attack and dies, leaving Brian alone in the plane. He is very scared and is sure he is going to die. Somehow, he manages to avoid hitting the trees when landing in in the middle of a lake. The plane hits the water hard and sinks. Brian loses consciousness. The next thing he knows, he is crawling out of the lake with a painful head injury and many other pains in his body. When he recovers from the shock of the plane crash, he realizes that not only is he wounded from the crash, but that all he has to help him survive in this unfamiliar region is the hatchet his mother gave him. This begins Brian’s 54-day adventure in a wild region of Northern Canada, and his transformation from being frightened into a self-confident person who learns to find solutions to the many problems he faces. The hatchet he thought was silly becomes his best friend.
I liked the adventurous book and gave it the rating of 4.5/5 stars. Brian is my favorite character because the whole story is about him and his hatchet, and how it helps him in his struggles. I also like the part when the moose butts him into the water and tries to kill him. He manages to escape with only a few broken ribs because he figures out how the moose behaves by looking at the hair on the neck. The part I didn’t enjoy is when Brian is planning to commit suicide with his hatchet after the rescue plane passes over him. He gets into a great depression that he later overcomes. Also, the realistic and detailed descriptions of injuries in the book where not so nice to read about.
Overall, the moral of the book is that no matter how bad a situation is, stay positive and don’t waste energy feeling things are hopeless because that attitude will not solve your problems. Brian’s change in attitude made him mentally and physically stronger after trying to survive the adventures in the wilderness. I greatly recommend this book.