This is my first post on this blog. Not my first blog, mind you, just first post on
this blog. I am notorious for starting a blog and leaving after two or three posts. I plan to make this one different.
For my first post, I am going to write a book review for my mother :)
Hatchet was written by a man named Gary Paulsen and first published in 1987. While the book is not very well written, the story is genius. Within the first few chapters, you forget that this guy can't write very well.
At the start of the story, a guy named Brian Robeson is flying on a bush plane to visit his dad in Canada. His parents had got a divorce not long before that and this was the first time Brain was going to see his dad.
So, just Brian and the Pilot are on this tiny plane. In the several hours he had been there, the Pilot had not spoken a word. When he finally does, Brain decides he's a pretty nice guy, after all, he did let Brain fly the plane for a moment.
So they're just flying along when suddenly, the Pilot has a heart attack. He accidentally jerks the plane off course, then not long after, dies.
So now Brian is all alone, in a plane that has gone off course, and only knows what the Pilot just told him about flying planes. Trouble? Yeah. (BTW, side note here. I thought I was going to die just reading this part, I was freaking out that much. I already forgot how badly it was written.)
Brian tries to contact someone, but by the time he actually does, he is almost out of range. So he loses the signal. He's all alone, flying a plane (pretty successfully I might add), and he can't contact anyone.
Brian flies for a couple of hours, figuring he might see a town or something, but all he sees is the Canadian wilderness. Mile after mile of trees. Then he realizes he is going to have a problem: the plane will run out of gas. It was only a small plane after all, and he had no clue where he was headed, now that he was off course, and on top of all that, he had kept the plane flying for hours. Sooner or later he would run out of fuel. Then what?
Brain decides there is only one thing to do: land the plane. There were lakes everywhere, so he decides to land in a lake.
During the chapter when he is trying to land the plane, I thought my heart might stop. Everything is going against this poor guy. When he finally tries to land the plane, he can't find a lake anywhere.
Eventually he crash-lands in a huge lake and barely makes it to safety. The plane sinks, along with the Pilot's body, the emergency supplies, Brian's stuff, everything except the clothes Brian is wearing and a hatchet his mom had given him as a parting gift. He had clipped it to his belt and forgot to take it back off.
So, for the next few days, Brian is miserable. Mosquitoes eat him alive, he has bruises and bangs all over from the crash, he has nothing to keep him warm and protected except his torn-up jacket, and on top of all that he's starving.
For the first day, Brian sleeps. All day pretty much. Then, when he wakes up. he's dying of thirst. So he drinks the only water available to him, the lake water, trying not to think of the Pilot's body decomposing at the bottom of the lake.
Brian hopes that he will be found by a rescue team in the next few days, so he dosen't really worry too much about food or shelter.
When, on his third day, he hasn't been found, he goes in search of food. He finds some berries that he gorges on, then finds a cool rock that makes good shelter. So that night, he goes to sleep, pretty sure he'll be fine.
Well, in the middle of the night, he wakes up, sick as a dog. So he loses all the food he ate earlier. He realizes maybe he shouldn't have ate the pits when he ate the berries.
Over the next little while, Brian builds himself a better shelter and finds some better food (raspberries). He thinks he's doing great.
Then one night, a porcupine comes into his shelter in the middle of the night. He kicks it and is left with spines in his leg. So he decides to build a more secure shelter.
Soon, he also realizes he needs a fire. So he figures out how to use his hatchet to get some sparks. Of course, sparks don't make a fire by themselves. In the end, he discovers a way to start a fire, and through the most of rest of the story, he keeps the same fire going.
The next night, Brian wakes up to a strange noise. He discovers a turtle has buried her eggs in the sand on the banks of the lake. Since his store of raspberries is almost depleted, Brian decides to try a raw turtle egg. After the first one, it wasn't so bad, so he ate about half. After that, he buries them back in the sand to save for later.
So next, Brian discovers there are fish in the lake. So he sets out to somehow catch them. He eventually builds a spear to try and catch them. It didn't work. He tried everything he could think of, but the fish were just to fast. So he goes to pick more berries instead. Along the way, he stops to get some wood to make himself a bow, thinking that would work better than his fish spear.
While he was in the woods, he hears a plane overhead. So he rushes back to his camp where he has a bonfire ready to be lit, just in case a plane should pass by. He gets it lit, but too late. The plane has passed by and didn't see him.
That night, Brian gets depressed and tries to kill himself, sure that he will die in the wilderness anyway. All this time the only thing that has kept him going was the thought of being rescued. Now he is sure that it will never happen.
The next morning, Brian awakes a new man (a new teenager I should say, he is only like, 14 or something, but new man sounds better than new teenager). He decides he has a reason to keep going.
So, Brain keeps going. He figures out how to catch the fish. He even figures out how to catch birds to eat. He becomes more in tune with his surroundings. The animals around no longer scare him because he knows they don't want to bother with him any more than he wants to bother with them.
Then, one day while he is out hunting a bird, a moose attacks him and almost drowns him. He is pretty sure he has broken a rib or two. That night, a tornado rips everything away.
Brian is devastated. Everything he has worked so hard for, blown away. But not only bad came from the tornado. The tail end of the plane has been pulled up out of the water. And Brian knows that the emergency pack is in the plane.
After fixing up his camp, Brian builds a raft to take out to the plane wreck.
After finally figuring out that he can use his hatchet to cut open the plane's exterior, Brian gets to work. And drops his hatchet in the water. He dives down to get it, but is unsuccessful the first time. The water seems too deep. After another try, he gets his hatchet back and gets back to work.
When he cuts a hole big enough, Brian gets in the plane and dives down, looking for the emergency pack. When he finds it he hurries back to shore to examine the contents.
He firearms, ammunition, matches, soap, a fishing rod, tons of food and some device that he is unsure of. He messes with it a moment, then puts it down and turns his attention to the food.
Even though he knows he should ration it, Brain decides to feast first. So he fixes himself all kinds of things that he hasn't eaten in such a long time.
And a plane lands. Using floats, it lands in the water right in front of him. Although he doesn't know it, the device he had been messing with was an emergency transmitter, and he had accidentally turned it on. A nearby plane had heard the signal and come to his aid.
All told, Brian had been alone in the woods for 54 days.
After I had finished the book, I wondered how Brain fit back into society. I mean, he had been in survival mode for all that time, then he came back and could live a normal life again. If I had been in that situation, I wonder how long could I have held out?
Anyway, it was an interesting story. Like I said, it was written pretty terribly, but I didn't notice by the end. Other people might not notice at all, but I am a little bit of a book snob, so what can I say? :)
Hatchet is definitely worth a read. Even though I just old most of the story, there are, I'm sure, things I left out.
Anyway, I think a lot of the posts on this blog will probably book and movie reviews. So don't read them if you don't want the story spoiled ;)
Cheers!
