Hatchet Chapters 13-16

Brian stands still in the water and waits to catch a fish. He isn’t hunting fish today, but one of the foolish birds, a flock of which lives nearby. His instincts kick in and, Brian looks up to find a wolf someway up the hill from him. Those instincts had helped him once before and had allowed him to sight a bear with its cubs. He looks at the wolf and nods at him, as the fear leaves him and Brian accepts the wolf as a part of the woods. The wolf departs along with a pack of three others, and Brian nods at each of them. He walks out of the lake and thinks about time, it had been 47 days since the crash and 42 days since the birth of the new Brian.

The old Brian had died when the plane had not returned, he had sunk into depression until he had thought to end it all. He had tried to kill himself with his hatchet but had been unable, for it had been too hard. He had woken the next day born anew possessed with a fierce wish to survive. He had made many mistakes after that, but he had learned. He remembers how he had used his shoelaces to string his first bow, and how it had nearly blinded him when he had pulled it. The bow had been too stiff and had exploded into splinters on that first draw, some pieces of wood had embedded themselves very close to his eyes. He had made a better bow but had failed to bring down a fish until he had remembered about refraction. That first shot he had made after that had caught him a fish. He had walked out and roasted it over the fire and savored every piece of it. He had been so proud of himself for creating food from a bow and arrow that he had made himself. He had eaten so much fish that first and had believed that he would never grow tired of fish. Brian is now filled with tough hope, not one of rescue but rather of survival.

Brian now understands that mistakes can cost him his life in the woods, unlike if he was in the city. One of the most important rules of nature that Brian had come to understand was that everything needs food. The first night after catching the fish, Brian had woken in the middle of the night to find a skunk digging where he had buried his turtle eggs. Brian had actually smiled to see the skunk but he couldn’t have him eating his food and so he had yelled out something silly. Immediately, the skunk turned around and sprayed Brian full in the face. The acrid liquid had filled his mouth, lungs, and eyes. He clawed out of the shelter and hurled himself into the lake in an attempt to clear his face. He could have been blinded or impaired and his eyes had hurt for weeks afterward. The shelter still smelled like the skunk.

He understood that he had been lazy, and so had broken the second rule of nature. The work for food never stops. Brian had been lazy in not setting up his shelter properly, and so he spent the next day, fortifying his wall and creating a firmer door. Then he began to construct a food shelf above the shelter to store the food, but he realized that he can’t store dead fish. So he uses some of his fish remains to lure fish into a shallow pool and closes it off from the lake with a gate of wooden mesh. Brian had then begun to plan for the future.

Brian doesn’t measure time in days anymore but in events. He recalls the time of the first meat. Brian had woken up from sleep with thoughts of his mother’s cooking and had resolved to hunt one of the foolish birds first before doing anything else that day. The birds were nearly impossible to spot because of their camouflage and because they had a habit of remaining exceptionally still. They were, however, extremely foolish, and had a habit of suddenly bursting into feathers. Brian becomes frustrated when he isn’t able to see the birds, and so tries to observe one after he stumbles across it. He watches the bird fly and identifies its shape. He realizes that he needs to be looking for the shape and not the colors of the bird. This change in perspective makes an immediate difference and he finds it easy to spot the birds, but he still has trouble hitting the bird with his bow and arrow.

He realizes that his arrows are good for the fish which are hardly very far away, but for the birds, the arrows need feathers to fly straight. So he abandons the bow and arrow and makes use of the spear. He has a little trouble getting close enough to the birds at first but figures out a tactic, and then kills a bird with one strike. He takes the bird home and struggles with dressing the bird. He feeds the offals to his pond of fish, and sets up the naked and dressed bird on the fire. He is tempted to eat it soon but forces himself to wait until it is properly cooked. That first bite tastes better than any hamburger he had ever eaten.

There had been many firsts after that, he had made his first arrow from some pitch from a stump and splinters of feathers. He had never been great with the bow but now the arrows flew straight. Brian has to take multiple shots to get the bird with an arrow, but he manages to hit it and then strikes it sharply on the ground to kill it. He goes down to the lake to clean off the blood and turns back to see a moose come out of the trees. The cow has no horns but it charges him and hits him with its forehead. It pushes him into the water and then tries to smash him into the mud. It stops suddenly and when Brian tries to move, it comes back and thrashes him again. Brian feels something break in his chest and has to crawl out of the lake inch by inch. He is unable to understand why the cow had attacked him. He retrieves his arrow and bird when the cow has left.

At night, Brian is woken from sleep by the sound of a strange growl, he feels like he should know the sound but finds it impossible to place it. He comes out of his shelter and hears it clearly, the wind sounds like a train. He understands that the sound approaching him now certainly means that a tornado was approaching. He realizes that it is too late for him to do anything and just as he turns to return to his shelter the tornado hits him. It slams him to the back of the shelter, rips his wall of wood, and takes the food and tools he has. It takes him again, slams him into the sand, and throws around the coals of his fire. Brian cleans off the glowing charcoal from himself and sinks into a fitful sleep. He awakens the next day resolved to survive, no matter what would come, Brian would survive. He finds his bow on the shore, although broken, Brian retrieves the precious string. His chest is tight with pain that he has to be very careful while walking. He sees the tail of the plane and realizes that the tornado had caused the plane to shift and brought it out into the shallows. He remembers the dead pilot who is probably still in the plane. Brian believes that he should somehow honor the pilot's life, and so adopts the same mindset that he has when he is hunting the birds. He then prays that the pilot finds rest.

Analysis

Brian sinks into dispair when the rescue plane fails to find him, he begins to believe that a life without rescue was a life worth ending, and so attempts to commit suicide. This incident shatters Brian's resolve to think positively, but it also serves as the means for his transformation. Brian experiences a renewal in that incident, as he concludes that he'll do his best to survive despite his circumstances. The change is so significant in his viewpoint that he deems that night to be the death of the 'old' Brian and the following day the birth of the new.

Brian's encounter with a female bear and a pack of wolves demonstrates the increasing understanding of his place in nature. He now relies on his instincts and intuition and uses them to spot predators nearby. He can understand that he is in danger before fully realizing that he is nearly in between a female bear and her cubs. The time he sees the wolves, Brian is afraid at first, but soon the fear melts away as his understanding of nature takes over. He can understand that both the pack of wolves and he were a part of the natural world, and so had their own roles to play so he offers his respect to them as he nods at all the wolves that pass his way.

Another aspect that demonstrates Brian's increased integration with the nature around him lies in how he begins to measure time. He doesn't think of his time in days and instead measures it with the passing of important events. Brian's life involves several regular tasks that are central to his survival, and since these tasks need to be performed every day Brian begins to lose the distinction between days. Instead, he measures time using events that changed the way he lived, for example, the times of first bow, first meat, and several others.