Book Report Hatchet

Hatchet is a book written by Gary Paulsen and is a fictional novel about a boy lost in the Canadian woods. This story is about a boy in the Canadian woods that is dealing with the struggles of divorce where he will experience what it is like to be alone. He will come to find that there are some problems to face along the way. Brian will come to find out that the Canadian woods is a very dangerous place for a lost boy. Brian knows that finding the right foods and protection could be very crucial.
The setting of Hatchet is in the Canadian woods during the summer. The important characters in the book are, Brian he is a protagonist character who is also a dynamic character and a round character. He finds a change in himself because in the beginning
he was very scared and later on in the book while looking at his reflection, he sees physical changes but he mentally tells himself that he is stronger, and he will survive, and he will power through this conflict of him being lost. Brian has many character traits. He begins in the book as being very sad and unhappy to being strong and powering through a conflict that comes up. Brian was sad and unhappy at the beginning because his mother and father were getting a divorce because his mom had a secret that mad Brian very upset. He found out that his mother was having an affair with another man. The antagonist in this book would be Brian’s mother. He blames her for the divorce of the marriage she was originally in and why he is not happy anymore. She tries to explain to Brian why the divorce took affect but he did not want to listen to her. Brian’s mother and father are also flat characters because we only know that they are getting a divorce and the book does not talk about them very much.
The text states that Brian and his mother are on their way to an airport so Brian can spend the summer with his father in Canada, on the way there Brian’s mother gives him a hatchet so that he can help his father chop down wood in the forest.
Brian gets to the airport to meet the bush plane and after a while in the plane, the pilot has a heart attack and dies. After that tragic event, Brian crash lands into a lake and swims to a nearby bank. Later on in the book, Brain builds a nice shelter and wonders how he is going to get food. After hours of searching, Brian finds a patch of berries and he begins to eat them very quickly and they make him really sick. He knows he can’t live without a fire so he ventures out for wood and chops it into to logs with his hatchet and builds a fire. A noise wakes Brian up and in the morning he finds out that it was a turtle laying eggs which he comes to the conclusion that the eggs are a nice source of food. He decides that eggs are not going to be enough so Brian makes a bow and a spear to catch fish with. As he is trying to catch fish, a plane flies over his head but the pilot does not see him so he falls into the depths of hopelessness and his suicide attempt shows his emotional state. Brian makes mental notes of what he has killed for food and calls them days. For example, one of his mental notes is “Rabbit Day.” The next day, Brian had just killed some foolbirds and is washing his hands in the lake when he hears the sound of something
taking a breath when he turns around he sees it is a moose and it violently starts attacking Brian. In the middle of that night, a far off roar awakens Brian. Suddenly, a tornado pops out if nowhere and ruins Brian’s shelter. While he is building it back up he begins to think about the survival pack the pilot was telling him about so he goes down to find it. He opens the pack and finds many useful items. Later that next day a small bush plane comes to find Brian and he offers him some food. The conflict in this story was external because Brian was facing the outdoors alone with nothing but the hatchet and some little trinkets he made to hunt with. The outcome of this conflict was a small bush plane came to rescue Brian.
The theme of this book would be man versus nature. This is one of the themes because the whole story is about a Brain and him being in the woods with various creatures that could potentially hurt him and he overcomes that by taking care of himself and fending for himself. A symbol in the book would be the hatchet. The hatchet provided him with all the other tools he made to help get him through his journey. This was the only constant thing Brian used.
Overall I thought it was a good book because it told the story of how strong someone can be when they want to protect themselves and get out of a dangerous situation. I would definitely recommend this book because it teaches a very good life lesson about fending for yourself. My favorite part of the book was when Brian was building the shelter because I always loves to use my imagination to build things and that’s what Brian did. My least favorite part of the book was when Brian go attacked by the moose because I could just imagine that happening and how bad it hurt. Overall, Hatchet was a great book about a lost boy with the desire to make it until someone rescued him and it was very exciting which makes me want to read the other books to see what other adventures Brain will go on.