72 pages • 2 hours read
Gary PaulsenHatchet
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1987A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
The Hatchet
The hatchet becomes the most important item in Brian’s life after the plane crashes. It is a gift from his mother and his last tie to his life back home. It is a bitter truth that if his mother had not cheated on his father, he would not have needed the hatchet or been on that airplane at all. Yet, without it, he might not have survived in the wilderness. The hatchet enables Brian to make fire, chop firewood, and prepare food and shelter. It is a simple, man-made tool that becomes a lifeline. In the end, it is the hatchet that allows Brian to access the interior of the wrecked plane, which leads to the emergency transmitter. In this way, the hatchet is responsible not only for his successful survival but also for his rescue.
Strength
Time and again Brian must endure injury, hunger, thirst, and sickness. He learns that being physically strong is helpful, but that emotional fortitude is far more important to survival. When he loses the ability to think positively, he sinks into panic, irrational thinking, and depression. This even leads him to try to kill himself. However, his physical wounds heal, proving that the real danger is in giving up hope. It takes succumbing to despair for Brian realize that he must maintain “hope in his knowledge. Hope in the fact that he could learn and survive and take care of himself […] I am full of tough hope” (120).
The Rifle
When confronted with the rifle in the survival pack, Brian is distressed. He has achieved a sense of unity with nature and views the lake and surrounding forest as his home. He acknowledges that hunting and feeding himself would be easier with a rifle, but he understands that his struggles to survive have given him a deeper understanding and way of being in the world that he would not trade for anything. He knows that with a rifle, he “didn’t have to know; did not have to be afraid or understand” (173). Encountering the rifle helps Brian appreciate all that he has been through and accomplished—feats he would not have achieved if he hadn’t been forced to push himself to truly understand and respect nature.
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