Hatchet

Gary Paulsen’s sense of adventure was a major contributor to this 1986 coming-of-age fiction.

Thirteen-year-old Brian Robeson, on his way to visit his father as a routine, encounters something that would go on to change him significantly. The pilot flying him to Canada dies on the plane. It’s all left to him to control. His fate in his hands, he crash-lands in the wilderness. There, he stays surviving for fifty-four days, losing a lot of body weight; learning a lot about nature, about living, and about survival.

Before the crash, Brian was just a boy who couldn’t even handle his bicycle well. But in that wilderness, he finds himself building things, making changes, changing, and calling the shots. In there, he’s all he’s got.

The wilderness is mostly beautiful, but towards the beginning of his stay there, the unpleasantness or inconveniences makes him miss home. That feeling almost belittles his parents’ broken marriage, and yes, the secret.

Key Facts about The Stranger

• Title: Hatchet
• Author’s Name: Gary Paulsen
• Date of Publication: November 1, 1986
• Literary Period: Contemporary Times.
• Genre: Young adult adventure, fiction, and coming-of-age story.
• Protagonist: Brian Robeson
• Climax: When the pilot dies, Brian is left to control the plane himself.
• Point of View: Third-person
• Style of Writing/Diction/Structure: Simple sentence structure, simple vocabulary—a very simple structure generally. The book is in prose form and has 19 chapters, consisting of 195 pages of hard copy.
• Setting: Most of the events in ‘Hatchet’ take place in a forest (wilderness) presumed to be in Canada.

Gary Paulsen and Hatchet

Gary Paulsen was an American writer known mostly for writing children’s and young adult fiction and coming-of-age stories. He had a career in writing spanning fifty-five years. In those years, he wrote over 200 books, 200 hundred magazine articles; short stories, and several plays. It is also worth mentioning that he was a poet. ‘Dogteam’ is one of his poems.

Gary Paulsen’s experiences growing up unsurprisingly shaped him a lot. Most of his books were inspired by his experiences. ‘Hatchet’ is one of them. Not all of it, just the part about adventure (which is most of it anyway). At the age of 14, he ran away from home. His sense of adventure spiraled from then on.

His parent’s marriage was not particularly successful. For the most part, he and his mother lived apart from his father. Even though at some point, they went to the Philippines to live with him, they lived separately most of the time. In his autobiography, he mentions his mother’s affair with a certain corpsman, someone they met on board a ship. Gary and his mum, traveling, witness a plane crash that claims lives. The corpsman with the help of Gary Paulsen’s mum takes care of the survivors. It is the corpsman she later starts having an affair with.

He also described his parents as mostly absent; he had to wing it on his own and was between jobs. Gary wasn’t particularly a bright student, but he had an interest in reading and knowing. He developed an interest in reading after a librarian gave him a book to read.

Brian Robeson, the main character from ‘Hatchet,’ has a lot in common with the person described here. Brian comes from a broken home, and in the wilderness, he fully taps into his sense of adventure. His quest for knowledge helps him a lot on his mission to survive in the wilderness.

Gary Paulsen’s Other Books

Gary Paulsen has over 200 books to his name. Some of them are:

‘Woodsong’ (1990) is a book of memoirs; ‘Lawn Boy’ (2007) tells the story of a twelve-year-old who decides to work on the lawnmower his grandfather gave him; ‘Woods Runner’ (2010) focuses on a thirteen-year-old boy who spends his days hunting for food for his family; ‘Soldier’s Heart’ (1998) is a war story as seen from the eyes of Charley Goddard, a sixteen-year-old; ‘Northwind’ (2001) is a coming-of-age story about an orphan, Leif, who goes through a lot trying to survive and is shaped by the harsh experiences he has; ‘Harris and Me’ (1993) pays attention to the interesting summer experience had by two young boys; ‘The Winter Room’ (1989) tells the story of eleven-year-old Eldon and his family, living on a farm; ‘Liar, Liar: The Theory, Practice and Disruptive Properties of Deception’ (2011) is the story of fourteen-year-old Kevin Spencer who is a chronic liar; ‘The Island’ (1988) tells the story of fifteen-year-old Wil Neuton and a very important summer in his life; ‘Dancing Carl’ (1983) is a story with lessons about living and loving, and ‘Cookcamp’ (1991) tells the stoty of a five-year-old sent to live with his grandmother in a cookcamp one summer.

Most of Gary Paulsen’s books are masterpieces. He won the Newberry Award three times. ‘Hatchet’ is arguably his most popular.

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