Hatchet

HATCHET. by GARY PAULSEN


Hatchet is about a boy named Brian. He is a thirteen year old boy who was traveling to Canada to go to his dad's house, but then the pilot had a heart attack. Brian had to take over the plane. Brian remembers the ride to the airport with his mother and how she tried to talk to him about what had happened. Before he leaves to the plane she gives him a present she has bought him for the trip. It is a hatchet. He then knows he must crash he see a lake and tries to land there, so he could get water if he was staying there long. When he's going down to the lake he flies off course and into the lake he swims to land thinking about why his mother and father are divorced. But he realizes he must get over that to survive. He awakens at early morning in a panic because it seems so dark. He is in pain all over, bruised and cramping with a sharp throb in his head. However, nothing seems shattered or broken or even sprained that badly, bruised. He thinks for a moment about the pilot still strapped in his seat at the bottom of the lake, but his thoughts continue to be disjointed. It takes him an hour or two to adjust to where he is, but he comes vividly awake when the mosquitoes begin to attack. They attack in such masses that his eyes are soon swollen shut, and he can only protect himself with his torn jacket . As the story goes on Brian becomes a man by thinking and surviving by himself and he has learned to forgive.

“If you keep walking back from good luck, he thought, you’ll come to bad luck.”