Guts: The True Stories Behind Hatchet and the Brian Books

Gary Paulsen’s Guts contains a foreword and six thematic chapters in which he shares stories about his life organized thematically rather than chronologically. Although most of the vignettes are autobiographical, Guts also contains heard stories and unverified rumors that offer explanation for the events behind Hatchet. “So many readers demanded to know specific incidents…that I felt I should tell the stories that inspired Brian’s adventures in the woods, just as they happened to me” (Guts: Foreword). Paulsen’s non-linear organization allows readers to directly tie experiences from Paulsen’s life to events in Hatchet rather than mine a chronological memoir for seemingly related events. For example, Hatchet opens on a pilot dying from a heart attack mid-flight, leaving Brian to crash-land the plane in remote wilderness. Paulsen does not tell his life story chronologically, but rather opens on several lived experiences with heart attacks, and then several lived experiences with plane crashes. Combined, the stories Paulsen shares in Chapter 1 give in-depth background for the opening chapters of Hatchet. If Paulsen had written Guts as a chronological memoir, many of the direct connections to Hatchet would be obscured. This clarity is particularly important for Paulsen’s target audience. Paulsen self-reportedly compiled Guts to reply to the extensive fan mail he received regarding the questions of young readers.

Guts offers a different literary perspective from Gary Paulsen’s fiction works, which are usually written in third person. The Hatchet series is written in close third-person perspective, in past tense: “Brian Robeson stared out the window of the small plane at the endless green northern wilderness below” (Hatchet: 1). Though the syntax and verbiage are similar, Guts is written in first-person perspective, past tense: “No longer was the forest sliding by beneath us wonderfully scenery; it had become a place that would try to wreck the plane” (Guts: 13). While the perspectives are different, the tone and feeling are similar. The confessional tone of Guts is enhanced by the first-person narration, which allows Paulsen to share his sense of humor, thoughts, and observations, as well as the facts of each novel-inspiring experience. Paulsen’s interpretations of the events he describes is as insightful to the backstory of Hatchet as the events themselves.

Paulsen’s writing style in Guts and Hatchet can be defined as simple, honest, and concise. He tells of harrowing events in his own life, and in Brian’s fictional life, with the same direct, unadorned approach that earned him accolades for his middle-grade fiction. In a 2021 interview, Paulsen said, “I never feel like I need to omit, or water down, or sugarcoat anything for young readers,” (Bullard, Lisa. “Gary Paulsen: Everything I Am Is Because of Books.” Mackin Community, 29 April 2021). The tone and language in the Hatchet series is appropriately middle-grade without compromising on content and the brutal reality of Brian’s harrowing situation. Meanwhile, the tone and language in Guts is similarly bold, but with a more adult sense of humor and fatalism. The pilot’s death in Hatchet, for example, unfolds as follows: Brian, “touched the pilot with the tips of his fingers, touched him on the chest and could feel nothing, no heartbeat, no rise and fall of breathing” (Hatchet: 14). In Guts, the heart-attack victim that inspires the pilot is described by Paulsen’s recollection that “the outlook was very bad and as I reached for him to put him on his back, he jolted as if hit by electricity, stiffened in the kitchen chair and fell sideways to the floor. His eyes looked into mine. Directly into my eyes” (Guts: 4). The similarly honest, direct, and concise language exemplifies Paulsen’s desire to tell honest, real stories. Where Guts differs from Hatchet, however, is in the adult author’s sarcastic and comical inner workings, sense of fatalism, and interpretation of events. After an engine stops mid-flight, Paulsen is told it happens frequently. His reaction was: “Oh, I thought, oh good. So we don’t have to worry, because the engine-stopping happens all the time” (Guts: 13).

Through the stories and vignettes that are the inspiration for many of the events in Hatchet, Paulsen’s characterization is revealed. He is a man deeply impacted by his experiences, who does not shy away from the emotions and thoughts that these experiences arouse in him. On writing and reflecting on the heart-attack victim, Paulsen says: “But I did not sleep well that night when I wrote him into the book and I will not sleep well tonight thinking of his eyes” (Guts: 4). On his failed second Iditarod attempt, Paulsen pays homage to the winner of the race with respect and admiration, rather than with machismo: “Libby Riddles won the race, the first woman to do so, by heading across sea ice in wind and storm so strong that nobody else would attempt it” (Guts: 19). This reveals a man of character and perspective rather than of ego. Finally, in describing his love of flying, Paulsen reveals himself to be a man of dreamy idealism: “I will never forget the moment when the wheels first broke free of the runway and the plane slid a bit to the side. It was an incredible feeling of freedom, as if the earth no longer held me” (Guts: 25). While Guts highlights the many ways Paulsen and his character, Brian, are similar, it also shows the ways in which they are different. Paulsen asserts his true self through his personal stories, acknowledging his beloved character while revealing aspects of his own identity.