The Hatchet By Gary Paulsen Summary

The author, Gary Paulsen, writes about a thirteen year old boy, named Brian Robeson, who lived in a city all his life...until now. Now, he basically tries to survive in the wilderness. This obviously wasn’t his choice though. His parents are separated, and it was time for him to catch a flight to canada, where his father lived. Before the flight, the mother gave him a hatchet as a present, and hooked it on his belt. On the way up there, the pilot kept a dull and quiet personality. When the tension loosened a little bit, the pilot actually let Brian drive the plane. Although scary, Brian got the hang of it rather quickly. While the pilot was driving, he randomly had a massive heart attack, and since there was no medical assistance, he died within a couple of minutes. Brian was now all alone and terrified. When he finally came to his senses, he saw the radio the pilot used and he tried to reach out for help. His attempts failed. He luckily finds a lake and crashes into it, then he somehow escapes, very wounded.

Brian starts to recover and take up inventory into a little shelter, made up of rocks and a wall he built with sticks, including a door. He finds berries to eat and some turtle eggs. Later on

It destroyed the shelter and when it hit the lake, the plane floated up towards the surface. Immediately, the survival pack in the plane came to his mind, so he built a raft and went to the plane. He used a his hatchet to open the part of the plane that hanged in the air above the surface of the water, created a hole, and went inside to retrieve the survival pack. He brought it to his shelter and found in it a set of matches, cooking equipment, fishing supplies, freeze-dried foods, and an emergency transmitter. As he explored to kit, and while the transmitter was still on, he experienced a plane coming to rescue him because of the emergency transmitter’s signal it gave