Imagine that you are a 13-year-old on a bush plane flying to see your father. The only other person onboard, the pilot, suddenly dies of a heart attack mid-flight. Your plane goes off course, stalls and crash lands without you knowing your precise location or if the cries for help were really heard over the radio.
You’re stranded in the Canadian wilderness, in the middle of nowhere. Though you are not unscathed, at least there are no broken bones. With nothing but a hatchet, tattered clothes, and money that unfortunately has no value, you have to survive and deal with what nature throws at you until help arrives. But will it?
This is the plight of 13-year-old Brian Robeson, the protagonist in Gary Paulsen’s* 1986 young adult novel “Hatchet”, a classic man vs wild story that I was introduced to in the sixth grade. Although I, thankfully, never had to find myself in the same predicament, there are still some lessons from my interpretation of the book that I think are important, being more prominent after reading it as an adult.
A story about survival, the book sees Brian grow from a young boy to a resourceful, self-sufficient and independent character over the period of time that readers get to share his adventures and hardships with him. One of the most crucial points that I picked up from the book is the importance of thinking positive despite bad circumstances. Beyond that, however, is the lesson that self-pity will not resolve anything.
Two of my favourite excerpts from the book are as follows:
“He did not know how long it took, but later he looked back on this time of crying in the corner of the dark cave and thought of it as when he learned the most important rule of survival, which was that feeling sorry for yourself didn’t work”. (Ch.8)
“When he sat alone in the darkness and cried and was done, was all done with it, nothing had changed. His leg still hurt, it was still dark, he was still alone and the self-pity had accomplished nothing.” (Ch.8)
Although we may not find ourselves in a situation as harrowing as Brian’s, I think that this is something that can be applied even outside of surviving in the wilderness. It can be in our daily lives as we work our jobs or sit in classrooms, which at times can knock us down for different reasons. Getting through a few rough days, weeks, months or even years can be difficult, but feeling sorry for oneself and lying idle will not get one out of a rough patch.
Brian was thrust into an environment and situation where nearly everything was beyond his control. If he accepted this as a fact, perhaps the novel would be much shorter than it already is and won’t spawn a series of five different books. He decided to take control of what he could and not take instances of hopelessness, one of which nearly drove him to suicide, and doubt take over. Lessons that can be learnt from and applied regardless of the setting.
Moreover, I think the book also shows progression in where Brian goes from a young boy just attempting to find things out on his own to someone who matures and has a grasp of what to do. Not only does it show independence, but maturity and growth through the circumstances, which made him stronger, something that might be inspiring for younger readers.
Hatchet is one of my favourite books and revisiting it as an adult has been a treat. While it is not perfect and it might not suit everybody’s literary taste as it is a book for a younger audience and talks in detail about the wilderness and survival skills, among others, I think that there are lessons to be found that might be interesting and important for just about anybody, regardless of age, gender or situation.
Being short and easy to finish, as well as cheap and accessible, it is a book I highly recommend. You might find the same lessons, or you might just read a well-written story about survival.
*Gary James Paulsen (1939-2021) was an American writer of children’s and young adult fiction, best known for coming-of-age stories about the wilderness.
This photo shows my e-copy of Gary Paulsen’s “Hatchet”, which I recently reread.
– Photo: Rui Pastorin
