45 pages • 1 hour read
Gary PaulsenGuts: The True Stories Behind Hatchet and the Brian Books
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Middle Grade | Published in 2001A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Geographical Context: A Childhood in Rural Minnesota
The early coming-of-age anecdotes in Guts begin in the Minnesota north woods around 1951, when author Gary Paulsen is roughly 12 years old. After returning from visiting his military father in the Philippines after the conclusion of World War 2, Paulsen lives for several years in Thief River Falls, Minnesota. The town is located 70 miles south of the Canadian border and offers access to a string of lakes, raw wilderness, and the Agassiz National Wildlife Refuge, which was established in 1937. The refuge and surrounding areas are home to wild moose, elk, deer, grouse, ducks, and rabbit, among other animals and a wealth of fish and birds.
The town is famously one of the most ethnically concentrated in the continental United States, with Norwegian Americans accounting for over 50% of the total population. In 1950, roughly 7,000 people called Thief River Falls home, including the Paulsen family.
During the 1950s, northern Minnesota was economically disadvantaged, and jobs were hard to find while offering low wages. The post-war economic boom was slow to reach this remote area. Many able-bodied men turned to trapping and hunting to provide for their families. Trapping and hunting became a respected means of earning additional income, with rabbits returning 20 cents apiece. In Guts, Paulsen reports earning up to $2 a day running trapping lines and selling the spoils. As a young man, he also worked setting pins at a local bowling alley and aiding rural farmers in the harvest season. Paulsen’s wilderness skill would have been a respected and welcomed asset to his family and community at the time.
Genre Context: Fiction-Informing Memoir
Guts is a work of nonfiction meant to inform a work of fiction written by the same author, and as such it occupies a unique niche. Although the work is based on the author’s lived experiences, it is not easily classifiable as an autobiography because it is narrow in scope and specific in aim. Guts is thus a memoir of thematically-linked, non-linear events told in the first person, interspersed with tangents, tidbits, and factoids from across the world of survivalism.
The book seeks to answer readers’ questions about the specific experiences in Hatchet that relate to Paulsen’s past: “Most of the mail I’ve received about these books has consisted of questions about those parts of my personal life that paralleled Brian’s” (Guts: Foreword). Although Paulsen released a collection of essays (Father Water, Mother Woods: Essays on Fishing and Hunting in the North Woods) meant to satiate his readers, “the result was that the mail, far from settling down, actually increased” (Guts: Foreword).
Uniquely, the stories shared in the memoir collection were selected based on readers’ requests for elaboration or explanations about Hatchet. Paulsen’s memoir is a direct result of reader inquiries, the subject matter and scope determined by his fans. This collaborative approach to the creation of memoir is unique because it is both born of the reader and created for the reader.
Although Guts is a memoir comprised of vignettes relating to wilderness survival scenarios that inform or expand on themes, events, and scenarios in the fictional Hatchet series, the book can be read as a series of standalone survival stories. Familiarity with Hatchet isn’t necessary to understand and enjoy the anecdotes in the book.
Related Titles
By Gary Paulsen
