Hatchet Essay, Research Paper

Hatchet, a Gary Paulsen masterpeice, was the topic of this book report. It was slow moving in developing characters in the beginning, but became more fast pace later on. Hatchet is a story about a young boy named Brian who has to overcome great obsticles including his parents’ divorce and being on a plane while it crashes into the deep forests of Canada. Will Brian, a city boy, be able to survive in the wilderness alone?

The setting at the beginning is in New York City when Brian is describing the secret that he had to keep from his father. His mother was secretly seeing other people. This problem soon became the cause of a divorce. He would live with his mother during the school year and then live with his father over his summer vacation.

His first major problem that goes wrong is when he is on the plane on his way to visit his dad. The pilot all of a sudden has a heart attack and Brian is forced to try to land the plane. He looks for a place to land it, but there were forests with tiny lakes for as far as he could see. He solved his problem by crashing the plane on one of the lakes. The plane sinks, but Brian gets out with mild injuries.

His next problems he faces is encountered while he is fighting for survival. He encounters misquitoes that tear off chunks of his back. In his search for food he encounters some minor competition with a bear, a moose, and a wolf. He only uses the skills he watched on TV to make a shelter, hunt for food, get the survival kit from the plane, and survive the other dangers that he finds.

Overall Hatchet was a well written masterpiece. Gary Paulsen spent months in the wilderness ust so he could write such amazing expressions. I would recommend this book to everyone who likes to read nature books or adventure books. And that concludes my book report on Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet.