Hatchet Chapters 5-8
Brian wakes up with the sun in his face, and a dry mouth. The first thing he knows is thirst, he has never before felt such a need for water. Brian knows that in the movies, the hero always finds a clear spring to drink from, but there doesn't seem to be any spring here, although there is a clear blue lake. He leans over its surface to drink from a section without bugs, and cannot bring himself to stop drinking. He drinks until his stomach swells, and his head grows lightheaded as he stumbles away and throws up most of the water. However, his head isn’t aching so much anymore, and he begins to process the event. He thinks short thoughts and concludes that he had heard about plane crashes on the news before, and he understood that the authorities generally found the plane. Brian is certain that they will be coming for him since his mother and father would be frantic. Brian thinks about the first meal he’ll have when he has returned home and thinks of a hamburger. He experiences hunger, an empty clawing feeling in his stomach that the water had failed to smother. Heros in the movies found plants, trapped animals and cooked them over a fire, but Brian couldn’t have any of that because he had nothing.
He then remembers his English teacher, Mr. Peprich, and his advice on being positive and motivated. So Brian makes an inventory of things. He checks all his pockets and includes all his clothes, but his most seemingly useful possession is the Hatchet that his mother had given him. Brian also begins to realize that he may not be rescued very quickly, since the pilot had jerked the plane sideways during the heart attack. And Brian had flown the plane for hours and hours, away from the filed flight path. He might be 400 miles away from where they would be searching.
Brian decides that he needs to build a shelter, as fear of wild animals dawns on him, and he needs to find some food. Brian remembers that Terry and he had played a game about what they would do if they were stuck in the wild, but in all their scenarios they had had guns, matches, and other things, while Brian had none of those. He finds shelter behind a large rock, a side of which has been eroded to create a depression almost like a cave. He decides to cover the shelter with a few branches, but when he goes to lift some of the wood his weakness becomes apparent. It is obvious to him that he needs to get some food. He remembers a show about some pilots that had to survive in the desert, most of the show didn’t help but he remembered a woman picking beans. There were no beans around but there could be berries, for there were always supposed to be berries. He gets up to search for them and looks at the sun to gauge time. He remembers that today is Thursday, and that means his mother would be going out to see him. For she always saw him on Thursdays, and if she hadn’t been seeing him, then she wouldn’t have forced the divorce on his father, and Brian would never have had to fly to Canada.
He focuses on the task at hand and begins to search for berry bushes while keeping the lake in his sight. He follows some birds and finds them eating delicious-looking berries. He hurries to them and immediately begins to stuff them in his mouth, but he nearly spits them out for they aren’t really sweet but tart, and have a large pit. Brian is beyond caring, he continues to eat the berries with pits and all. He also uses his jacket to carry some back to the shelter. Then he begins to assemble the doorway to his little shelter and soon has to put his jacket back on because of the mosquitoes. However, he manages to weave together the branches and wood to create a decent covering with a slight gap for a door. Brian tries to light a fire by rubbing some sticks but finds it impossible. He drifts off to sleep with his stomach tightening with the recently eaten berries.
Brian wakes up screaming for his mother and feels as if his abdomen is going to burst. It feels like all the berries he ate are exploding in his stomach, he crawls out of his shelter, throws up in the sand, and has diarrhea. It feels like he has been throwing up for a whole year, and finally, Brian crawls back to his shelter feeling drained and empty. He can’t go off to sleep and begins to think of the secret. He remembers seeing his mother kiss the man who was not his father, and it hadn't been a friendly kiss but a passionate one. This is the secret that he had told no one, one that had caused his mother to divorce his father, but Brian plans on telling his father.
Brian wakes to find himself still famished and goes down to the lake to wash his hands and face. He drinks a little water, and it immediately ignites his hunger. His face is now completely swollen with the several hundred mosquito bites that he’s had to bear, but his forehead has almost completely returned to normal. The sight of his disfigured reflection causes him to feel a lot of self-pity, and Brian can’t help but cry. He sits down, dirty, hurt, hungry, and he just cries for a couple of minutes.
The hunger is too much to bear so he eats some of the berries that he had harvested last night, but uses caution afraid of eating too much of them. He eats just a little of the berries and only the ones that appear ripest. He begins to conceive that if there is one kind of berry then there ought to be others that taste better. He sets out to search for more but reminds himself to stay close to home. He is surprised that he thinks of his little cave as a home. He finds bushes of raspberry for he recognizes them immediately. He eats them and savors the sweet taste of the raspberries. He hears a noise and turns to find a huge black bear standing behind him. Brian is frozen in shock, and his tongue is stuck with raspberry juice. The bear observes him for a moment and then turns to the raspberry bush and gently eats some and bounds away in a heartbeat. Brian remains frozen for another moment and without meaning to he starts running away from the bear’s direction. He soon stops and decides that he must go back for the berries. He goes back to the bush and picks some more with a lot of caution. He returns home to find a thick juice streaming from his jacket basket of berries. He enters his shelter, and lies down with the basket over his mouth, and enjoys the sweet juice, dry in his shelter while it rains outside.
Brian wakes in the middle of the night to the sound of a growl and immediately thinks of the bear. Then he registers the smell, the smell of dead things, graves, and cobwebs. He hears a slithering, jumps back, and kicks out. He feels a sharp pain in his leg and hurls the hatchet, which strikes off the wall and creates a shower of sparks. Brian retreats to the back of the shelter and hears the slithering moving away from him until it finally leaves the shelter. His leg feels like it's been stabbed by a thousand needles, and he realizes that there are 8 quills in his leg. He understands that a porcupine had stumbled into his shelter. Brian works to slowly remove all the quills, and the pain is excruciating. He sinks into self-pity and cries his heart out. He goes to a fitful sleep, a little more aware of the sounds around him. He has a dream of his father and Terry. His father seems to be trying to tell him something and he grows a little cross when Brian doesn’t understand him. Then Terry appears and he keeps pointing at the fire. Brian grows annoyed for he understands that he needs fire but has no way of getting it.
He wakes with the first light of day and examines his hatchet. It has a slight chip from where it hit the wall, and Brian has a moment of realization. He understands that the hatchet is the key to fire. He finds where the hatchet had bounced off and sees a black hard stone in the wall. He strikes with a blunt end of his hatchet, nothing happens at first, but when Brian aims a hard glancing blow, the hatchet lights up with fire as sparks fly out and jump around the dark interior of the cave.
Analysis
Gary Paulsen has garnered a reputation for his excellent use of the man versus wild theme, one which is developed thoroughly in the Hatchet. Brian is forced to live in the forest without having access to any tools of survival. He has to learn to live off the land, with just his hatchet, and this leads Brian to pay attention to the nature around him. Paulsen demonstrates that the theme of man versus nature doesn't necessarily vilify nature, but it rather conveys a respect for the dangers that it bear. It also serves to appreciate the beauty of nature. Brian's encounter with the bear is significant since he begins to think about something other than himself for the first time. This disassociation from his own wants and needs demonstrates the increasing adoption of his place in nature as well as those of the other creatures.
The power of positive thinking is another major theme of the novel, and it is first introduced when Brian begins to create an inventory of his things. He thinks about his English teacher, Mr. Peprich, who had tried to teach his students that they were their own most valuable asset. Brian's adoption of this positive mindset is tested most severely after he gets attacked by the porcupine. In that sequence, Paulsen writes that Brian learned the most important rule of survival, which was that self-pity doesn't work. Brian learns that dwelling on the negatives of the situation did not allow one to work their way out of them. This resolve towards a more optimistic mindset is tested most severely in the next section when Brian realizes that he has failed to alert the search plane of his presence.
