Hatchet Themes and Analysis 📖 (2024)

Arguably his best piece of work, Gary Paulsen’s ‘Hatchet,’ is heavy with lessons. It will have you on your toes while reading it, and even after. Using his experience as an archive to collect a significant part of the plot, Gary created a masterpiece.

For fifty-four days in the wilderness, hope kept Brian going. When the porcupine attacked, hope kept him going. When the skunk attacked, same, it was no different when the moose attacked. Twice, when he almost tried to kill himself, hope kept him going. A person without hope is dead. And when that person finally dies, it is right to say it is a second death. About hope, in the narrator’s words: “…filled with new hope, not that he would be rescued, but hope in knowledge. Tough hope.” Indeed, hope can be everything.

This one’s talking about how things can turn around quickly. It is evident in how situations flipped quickly in the wilderness. Brian could be happy and satisfied one moment (everything seeming right with the world), and the very next minute, he is fighting for his life—the porcupine, the skunk, the moose, and the tornado. It would have one feeling for Brian- like, just minutes ago, this guy was at peace, now see. After the moose attacked him, these were his thoughts: “A flip of some giant coin, and he was the loser.” He hoped the tornado hit the moose anyway.

An idle mind, they say, is the devil’s workshop. Brian had to keep himself busy at all times. Otherwise, the hopelessness of his situation was bound to drive him mad. It’s either he was sleeping or working on something, fishing/hunting, making the fire, getting some wood for the fire, working on his ‘home,’ just something. Also, the whole time he was in the wilderness, we never saw him sleeping in the daytime. That is just an observation. It isn’t good, and neither is it bad. The point is, Brian was always busy with something during the day and retired to sleep at night. This helped distract him necessarily.

Brian’s knowledge of aircraft, radios and transmitters, survival shows, rifles, and so on, helped him a lot. Even the ones he thought were useless, ended up being of good use to him, with or without his knowing or fully acknowledging that. The saying, “Knowledge is power” fits in perfectly here.

The extent to which dysfunction in a family can affect a child. Brian wouldn’t have been on that plane if his parents hadn’t divorced. From time to time, his mother’s affair haunts him. That is a weight too heavy for a child (or anyone who wasn’t involved in ruining things) to bear.

He became more sensitive, could tell sounds apart, and could tell when danger was lurking. Brian was humanized in that forest, because the truth is, the farther away one is from nature, the less human that person becomes. He thought the place to be beautiful. He wishes he could share it with someone, but thinks it’s beautiful to witness even alone. He also wonders what he’d miss if he ever got rescued.

This is not only about the stomach, and it is about the quest to know more and be more. This was behind all of Brian’s inventions. He made the bows and arrows because he needed to hunt for meat. He made the tools for fishing because he needed to catch fish; he built a doorway to his ‘home,’ eventually, for safety (mostly from smaller animals, anyway); he made a fire because it was very important to make fire, and so on. His hunger for knowledge helped him navigate the wilderness. What he knew before crashing into the wilderness helped him a lot. It is correct to say that once someone stops being hungry for knowledge, that person begins to die, to wither.

We see Brian’s situation now makes him miss his old life. This was a little while after he crash-landed in the desert. This is what fear can make people do. It became important to rid himself of fear. Predators can smell fear. Fear is not so useful an emotion. Fear is a time-waster. Being proactive is better than living in fear. He becomes more proactive and sheds the excess weight that is fear, went on to build a pond in the lake, prepared a place in the bluff to signal for help, learned to build fire, and so on. Brian’s plan to guide the plane on its way down when the gas finishes—though it does not work exactly as he wished—was him being proactive. It is preparedness in action.

Now, he sleeps better but wakes promptly. Some of the things he has survived; the first bow and arrow he made was too stiff, it almost blinded him. What he had learned: how to catch fish by aiming under (his Biology class came in handy), how he thinks he must have eaten over twenty fishes the day he learned how to catch fish. He was filled with new hope, not that he would be rescued, but hope in knowledge.