Sydney O Donnell #112

Planes, No Food, and Trees, Oh My!!! Hatchet is written by Gary Paulsen, a Newberry Award winning author. This story is about a thirteen year old boy named Brian Robeson. He is on his way to visit his father in Canada, which is kind-of close to his mothers house in the New York area. There are several significant events in Hatchet that show how adaptable Brian is. The whole story starts out with the Plane ride to Brians dads house. He was on his way with a pilot. The pilot is very nice and he even lets Brian fly the plane a little. Later on in the plane ride, the man has a heart attack and dies, and that is leaving Brian to crash the plane. So he gets the plane to what he thinks is on course. But he bumped the plane to lead it into a whole different direction. Finally, during the plane ride Brian notices the microphone on the dead pilots hip, and he got the guts to take it off. Of course, he talks through it to the other emergency pilot, he gets a hold of Brian, but they cut off constantly. Then Brian realized the plane ran out of gas, which forced him to crash land the plane all by himself. At last, he sees a lake that is L shaped and he figures he is going to land his plane there. In the middle of the story Brian desires a fire to cook his food on. As soon as he finds land he lays down to rest, just thinking about the hardships ahead. He woke up and got ready for survival. In addition, he makes a shelter, finds little food, but notices that he is missing something very important, a fire. Once he wakes up he finds that there is a porcupine in his shelter and he tries to get rid of it, and he attempts to throw the hatchet at it, except it misses and he hits the wall. Later on, Brian has a dream, and it is about his friend Terry, and he is pointing to a fire, it takes him a little bit to figure out that the sparks that were made when the hatchet hits the wall can be useful while making a fire. As a result, after many attempts he finally gets the

flames up, regardless to anything else in the way he is determined to keep the flames alive. After all, it costed him a twenty dollar bill. Later on, he gets the hang of the whole survival thing, he discovers little fish in the lake he crashed in, and he makes many attempts to catch them. With many different ways, then he finally catches one and cooks it on the fire. Finally fire! At the end of this story after a windstorm took place, Brian went to retrieve the survival pack. He sees that the airplane he had crashed in must have rotated over night with its tail up. So eventually, Brian finally thinks that there must be a survival pack in the plane. He remembers seeing the survival pack on his way to Canada, in the little Busch plane. Once he reaches the plane he checks all around the plane for any possible openings, and is unsuccessful which makes him furious and he punches the side of the airplane to find that the metal has deteriorated very much, and he could be able to get into the plane by opening it with the hatchet. But, while taking the hatchet out it slips out of his hands, and he is forced to go retrieve it at the bottom of the pitch black lake. In which he was successful and he was able to finally break into the plane and retrieve the survival pack. While getting the survival pack Brian notices the pilots skull. Horrified by seeing it, Brian still perseveres, and goes to retrieve the survival pack. Determined, he goes and retrieves it, and comes out happy and satisfied. As soon as, he comes to his shelter to open the survival pack, he finds what he calls treasure and is happy and finds out that there has been a plane that heard his emergency transmitter and has come to pick him up. Subsequently, he is reunited with his mother in New York and after that experience; he is a whole new man. In conclusion, there are several significant events in Hatchet that show how adaptable Brian was. Crashing a plane, making a fire, and getting the survival pack- all showed he could fight through obstacles and could persevere even when times were bad. In the end of the story Brian said a saying to the pilot. And that saying is, My name is Brian Robeson.