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Hatchet by Gary Paulsen - Free Book Summary

Introduction to Hatchet

The survival adventures of 13-years-old Brian Robeson in Hatchet have sparked the imagination of millions of young readers. Following a plane crash, Brian was stranded alone in the Canadian wilderness with nothing but a small hatchet and painful memories of his parents' recent breakup. Facing hunger, wild animals and harsh weather, Brian acquires inspiring survival techniques and on the same time develops as a human being.

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Executive Summary of Hatchet

Brian Robeson, 13-years-old, survives alone in the Canadian wilderness with nothing to assist him but a small hatchet. Brian was the only passenger on a small Cessna 406 plane when the pilot died of a heart attack and the plane crashed into a small lake. Left with only a hatchet he received as a gift from his mother, Brian then faces survival challenges – building a shelter, hunting for food, fighting off wild animals, big and small. While facing the outside wilderness, Brian also confronts his inner difficulties following his parents' breakup and what he conceived as his mother's unfaithfulness. After nearly two months of resourcefulness adventures, Brian is rescued, but in the process he had grown and changed to become a new person.

Hatchet - Complete Book Summary

Brian Robeson stared out the window of a small bushplane – A Cessna 406 – being the sole passenger sitting in copilot seat alongside the silent pilot. He was 13-years-old, living with his mother in New York, and was flying to spend the summer with his father, who was working in the oil fields of Canada. His parents have recently divorced and Brian knew his mother's secret – before the divorce, he saw her sitting with another man, kissing. Just before the flight, Brian's mother gave him a gift: a hatchet, the kind with a steel handle and a rubber handgrip, which he took with him on his belt.

The pilot let Brian control the plane for a little while, which became very useful minutes later, when the pilot reached for his shoulder in pain, hissed that his "chest is coming apart" and died of a heart attack. After a few minutes during which Brian could simply do nothing, he managed to take control over the plane and even call for help on the radio. But after a short while he lost the radio connection and he just kept the plane flying straight while trying the radio again every ten minutes. He was now flying off the planned course, because during his heart attack, the pilot has shifted the plane to the right. After nearly three hours, the engine coughed and then died out without fuel.

Brian was certain he was going to die, but somehow, he managed to glide the plane towards an L-shaped small lake, hit some trees, and then crash it into the water. The plane drowned deep, water came in and Brian actually sucked water in… but with a huge effort, he managed to tear his way out of the seat, through the broken front window, up and out of the water where he collapsed.

He was in pain and tired, but he survived the crash and slept throughout the night. With the early sun heat came clouds of insects, covered his body and face, got into his nostrils and mouth, and bit him until he was all swollen up. "Never, in all the reading, in the movies he had watched on television about the outdoors, never once had they ever mentioned the mosquito sot flies. All they ever showed on the naturalist shows was beautiful scenery or animals jumping around having a good time. Nobody ever mentioned mosquitoes and flies."

Looking around, he now saw the lake was surrounded by trees and everything was green. The plane – with the dead pilot inside – sank underneath the water. After another night of sleep, he woke up to a new feeling – he was "unbelievably, viciously thirsty." With no other choice in site, he decided to drink from the lake, which became his drinking water source.

The sun was high in the sky, the mosquitoes were gone, he drank – and with this relative comfort he thought: "Here I am and that is nowhere." He assumed he will be rescued within a few days and decided to wait for the rescue. But thinking of home brought memories of food and there came hunger. Since there was nothing to eat, Brian instead of feeling sorry for himself he remembered a lecture from his English teacher Perpich: "stay positive and stay on top of things." Try to get on top of things, he lay on the grass everything he had:

"It was pitiful enough. A quarter, three dimes, and two pennies. A fingernail clipper. A billfold with a twenty-dollar bill – 'In case you get stranded at the airport in some small town and have to buy food,' his mother had said – and some odd pieces of paper. And on his belt, somehow still there, the hatchet his mother had given him." He also had his clothes and shoes on. And he was hungry.

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The day after, Brian found a ledge under a big rock which provided him roof, and he settled his shelter under it. Remembering a television show about pilots being trained for survival, he searched and found a berry bush – the berries were like cherries, but lacked any sweetness. He ate many of them, "grabbing and jamming them into his mouth and swallowing them pits and all." Later that night in his newly formed shelter, he woke up screaming for his mother with jolts of pain in his abdomen. "It was as if all the berries, all the pits had exploded in the center of him, ripped and tore at him." He crawled outside, vomiting and with terrible diarrhea.

When he crawled back inside, all he could do was remember the secret – when he saw his mother kissing with the other man.

Another night has passed and with morning came the mosquitoes again. After them, Brian decided to find better berries, and he did. Raspberries, full and ripe and sweet. He ate many berries, but was smarter this time, and instead of cramming more after he was full, he kept some for later. But just when he was happy with his newly find treasure, he saw a huge black bear standing not twenty feet from him. After a moment of mutual studying, Brian almost unconsciously ran away. But the thought of the sweet berries pulled him back and the fact that the bear simply went away convinced Brian to overcome his fear and continue picking berries. And the berries were so good.

That night, he woke up in the still darkness of the shelter to the sound of a growl, and then was hit by a terrifying rotten smell. There was something alive in the shelter but he could not see it. He kicked as hard as he could and through his hatchet. The hatchet missed, hit the rocks with a shower of sparks and his leg was torn with pain. It turned out that it was a porcupine… except for eight quills he had to painfully pull out of his legs, he was fine.

In fact, he was more than fine. In a dream he had, his father and his friend Terry were trying to tell him something. When he woke up he understood. The incident with the porcupine gave him the idea of how to make fire: "I will have fire from the hatchet." But it was a long way from sparks to fire and it took him many trials and efforts until he finally made it.

"He could not at first leave the fire. It was so precious to him, so close and sweet a thing, the yellow and red flames brightening the dark interior of the shelter, the happy crackle of the dry wood as it burned, that he could not leave it."

Gathering wood for the fire became an ongoing task and Brian promised to himself that he would not let the fire die out.

That night he heard sounds again. This time, it was a turtle that had climbed out of the water to lay eggs in a pile of sand. For Brian this meant one thing – food. Despite being raw, Brian closed his eyes, squeezed and swallowed one as fast as he could. "It had a greasy, almost oily taste, but it was still an egg." From his recent experience with food, this time he ate only six out of the seventeen eggs, and he stashed the rest under the sand in the shelter, planning to eat just one a day.

After a few days in the while, Brian was getting used to a routine of "things to do" around his new camp. He set up a signal fire on top or a rock which he planned to light if a plane arrives. Looking from the top of the lake he was struck by the idea that there were fish in the lake – food. Without fishing gear, it wasn't easy, and his newly built fish spear kept missing the fish. He built a bow which didn't work as well. Then, he heard a sound coming in his direction. A plane. He ran and managed to set up a big signal fire, but it was too late – the plane turned back without noticing him. Brian thought that would be as far off to the side of the flight plan. It was gone, and with it all hope. And without hope, he could not play the game anymore.

Forty seven days after the plan had come and gone, Brian was still there, but it was a changed Brian. "… had died and been born as the new Brian." He had tried to end it all by cutting himself but stayed alive.

"He was not the same. The plane passing changed him, the disappointment cut him down and made him new. He was not the same and would never be again like he had been. That was one of the true things, the new things. And the other one was that he would not die, he would not let death in again."

In the passing days, Brian has mastered new survival skills. He managed to catch fish – he had to aim just below where the fish appeared to be, because of the water optical effect. The fish were a great source for food, but they were not rich enough. In a while, he developed a new kind of hope –

"Not hope that he would be rescued – that was gone. But hope in his knowledge. Hope in the fact that he could learn and survive and take care of himself. Tough hope, he thought that night. I am full of tough hope."

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Brian made mistakes and tried learning from them. Once, a skunk entered his shelter. It was not as cute in the cartoons and when Brian tried pushing it away, it sprayed him and blinded him for two hours. Loosing eyesight could have killed him. While Brian was washing his face in the lake, the skunk dug up and ate the remaining turtle eggs he stashed in the shelter. Learning from it – he then built a food shelf for storage in a high ledge in the rock above the shelter. He also started storing live fish in an enclosure he built inside the lake.

After fish came the day of First Meat. Brian developed hunting techniques and started catching chicken-like birds which he called foolbirds, because they were not very clever and froze on their place instead of running away. Despite their camouflage, he managed to see them with his improved instincts and hit them with his spear. Later, he improved his hunting using arrows, which led to First Rabbit Day. Brian was measuring time between events, First Meat, First Arrow, First Rabbit.

And then came the day of the moose. While Brian was washing a hunted bird in the lake, a huge moose appeared from the forest, took him with her forehead and through her into the water. There, it kept hitting Brian, hurting his limbs, drowning him, and nearly killing him. "Insane, he thought."

On that same day, after surviving the insane moose attach and dozing off, Brian was awakened by a low roaring noise. "Low, almost alive, almost from a throat somehow, the sound, the noise was a roar, far-off roar but coming at him… The sound wanted him." Brian got ready with his spear and bow, but the sound was of a wind – "wind like the sound of a train". It was a tornado. The tornado hit Brian's shelter, throwing him against the rocks, spraying the fire all over, ruining everything he had built. Then, it hit the water, the trees on the other side of the lake, and went on. Brian was barely alive. "And the last thought he had that morning as he closed his eyes was: I hope the tornado hit the moose."

The tornado ruined everything, but Brian was willing to rebuild. Then he noticed a new thing. The tornado lifted the tail of the sunken plane out of the water. The plane still held the dead pilot's body, Brian remembered, but also – the survival pack.

Brian rested for a day to heal the wounds from the moose and the tornado, and then he set to rebuild his camp and fire and approach the plane. He built a raft and against great difficulties, managed to push it into the water and get it to the plane. With his hatchet, he opened the plane's aluminum tail – once dropping the hatchet into the water and then diving for it pushing his lungs to new limits – and finally managed to get into the plane.

When he dove inside the plane, searching for the survival pack under the water, he saw the pilot's head, only it wasn't the pilot's head any longer. The fish had eaten most of it. "Too much. Too much. His mind screamed in horror…" But at the end he managed to find the survival pack, take it out of the plane and push it on the raft back to the shore, where he collapsed.

"Treasure. Unbelievable riches. He could not believe the contents of the survival pack." Brian found a sleeping bag, a cooking set, matched and lighters, a first-aid kit, a .22 survival rifle, an emergency transmitter that seemed not to work when turning the switch, and a lot of food. Brian was amazed with the quantity and richness of the food and was preparing for a feast, when a plane with floats appeared and landed on the lake. The pilot got out explaining he heard the emergency transmitter. He was amazed to see Brian and recognized: "You're that kid… They quit looking, a month, no, almost two months ago."

"Brian was standing now, but still silent, still holding the drink. His tongue seemed to be stuck to the roof of his mouth and his throat didn't work right. He looked at the pilot, and the plane, and down at himself – dirty and ragged, burned and lean and tough – and he coughed to clear his throat. 'My name is Brian Robeson,' he said. Then he saw that his stew was done, the peach whip almost done, and he waved to it with his hand. 'Would you like something to eat?'"

When the pilot rescued Brian he had been alone on the L-shaped lake for fifty-four days. During this time he had changed both physically and mentally. He became lean in body. He gained immensely in his ability to observe what was happening and react to it. He had become more thoughtful. The Canadian government sent a team to recover the body of the pilot and for a while the media was covered Brian's story. His parents were very happy but things between them went back to normal. Brian tried several times to tell his father about the Secret, but in the end never said a word about the man or what he knew.

Context

Brian's adventures in Hatchet were accepted so well by young readers, that author Gary Paulsen continued and published a series of sequels to become his Brian's Saga. The book was also awarded the Newbery Honor prize.

For writing this book summary, I came back to reading Hatchet again. Although the story hasn't lost its appeal, in today's world and reality TV shows, some of the adventures seem somewhat small in scale. But perhaps this is exactly what makes Hatchet so unique.

In my view, Gary Paulsen's Hatchet is a wonderful read for young readers and an excellent idea for a book report, for both elementary school and junior high.

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