The Hatchet By Gary Paulsen Summary

A 42-year-old woman from Alberta named Rhonda Cardinal was lost in Northern Alberta's wilderness after blacking out on a rabbit trapping trip in 2012. She was living off berries and river water. She couldn't explain how she went missing. She "blacked out", woke up lost and started wandering around through a bush. When she was lost, she encountered a bear. She survived for 16 days. The "Hatchet" by Gary Paulsen is about a fourteen year old boy named Brian Robinson who's traveling to Canada to visit his father. A horrible incident happened during his flight in the bush plane to Canada. Suddenly, Brian finds himself all alone in the Canadian wilderness with a hatchet that was gifted from his mom and his windbreaker. Brian has to bear the memories …show more content…
Second, Brian learns to do new things by trial and error. Brian uses trial and error when he was making a bow and arrow. The author tells us that Brian tries to make a bow and arrow for hunting, but the arrow broke and mostly hurt his eyes. His first bow and arrow didn’t work as he thought, but he never gave up. In the book, it says that “He made a new bow, with slender limbs and a more fluid” (118). This shows us that Brian is determined and never gives up on anything that didn’t work as he thought and he’s always positive.
Brian uses trial and error to retrieve the survival pack from the plane. In the book, it tells us that Brian makes a raft float on water and reach the plane’s tail that was out of the water. He tries to make an opening by banging his fist against the body of the plane, but later realizes that he didn’t have enough force. When Brian realized that he thinks to himself, ‘‘‘the hatchet. He might be able to cut or hack with the hatchet. He reached to his belt and pulled the hatchet… and took an experimental swing at it”’ (162). This quotation shows us that Brian improvises quickly. He’s always smart and