Blog post due 4/18/13

In the book Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, Brian, a 13 year old boy, crashes in a plane in the Canadian wilderness.  The author tells this story of a boy who must survive with only the clothes he had on and a hatchet. Brian was on his way to spend the summer with his father in Canada when the plane he was in went down. During Brian’s time alone in the woods he discovers he had a lot more strength to survive then he originally thought. For instance, when he goes looking for food and he finds berries, they make him really sick. He also shows a lot of strength when he survives several porcupine needles to his leg. After time, Brian learns how to survive in the wilderness by himself.  

A day after the crash Brian is starving and doesn’t know what to do. He decides to go for a walk to see if there is anything to eat around the lake. He walks around the lake and is going to give up when he finds a bush of berries. He is so hungry that he just started eating the berries right off the bush until he was full. That night he wakes up with a horrible pain in his stomach and throws up all the berries. This makes Brian a stronger person because it teaches him to be more careful of what you do and eat in the wild. After this Brian uses what he learned to wait until he found something, such as raspberries, that he knew he could eat.

One night Brian wakes up in the middle of the night because there is something coming closer and closer to him. Then something touches his leg so he decides to try and kick it. The creature was a porcupine and ends up sticking Brian with 8 quills in his leg. Brian is so scared and hurt that he is afraid to touch the wound or move in fear that the animal could still be there. In the morning Brian ends up going out of his little shelter to see the quills in his leg. He quickly decides to pull them out before the wound gets infected. This shows how strong Brian is because most people wouldn’t pull the quills out themselves.  Since Brian was all alone he had to face the challenges all by himself.

            In all brain shows a lot of strength after the plane crash. He was stranded in the middle of nowhere with just a hatchet and he survived. This story kind of reminds me of military training because that is exactly what some military branches do as basic training. Except the training doesn’t go on for 54 days like Brian had to.