Notes from My Readings: Hatchet by Gary Paulsen

(finished reading 2019-05-21)

Our daughter bought and read this book for youth sometime ago because the teacher of her gifted cluster sessions recommended it to her. She really enjoyed it and recommended it in turn to me. As part of my unwinding and relaxation after an intense school year, I began reading it and finished quickly because it was so engaging.

I recommend it wholeheartedly to parents to suggest it as summer reading to the kids!

Overview
This is a story about Brian, a 13-year-old boy with a personal and family crisis (parents' divorce), who is on his way in a small plane to visit his dad in the Canadian oilfields. The plane's pilot suffers a heart attack during the flight and so the plane crashes in the middle of the Canadian wilderness. There Brian learns to survive and even flourish with the help of a hatchet that his mother gave him before he left. He learns precious lessons about life while trying to live in the wilderness, lessons that leave their indelible mark on him and radically change his outlook on life. In his words, the experience changes him and makes him like a new being so much so that he distinguishes his "old" self from the "new" self (p. 117) that was born as a result of his wilderness adventures (e.g., p. 115). 

My Takeaways

1. Adversities and difficulties are some of the best ways to yank one out of one's comfort zone where one takes everything for granted. They force you to appreciate each and every thing you have mindlessly enjoyed up to now. We see this in Brian as he tackles one difficulty at a time because his very life and survival depend on it. We see him going through one hoop at a time in order to ensure his survival - food, shelter, fire, self-defense (against mosquitoes and other animals in the wild). This is an example of the spirit of "ippo-ippo" (step by step). His experience in the wilderness is an instance of a modern person going back to the primitive and primordial level of human beings when they were at the mercy of nature in order to eke out an existence for themselves. His experience, as mentioned, enables him to appreciate every little thing he has taken for granted such as the ready availability of food in modern life (e.g., 179) because he had to struggle tremendously to provide those very basic needs for himself with great labour in the woods.
2. The story illustrates a state in which one is stripped down radically to one's bare essentials - just the most necessary things to survive with all the non-essentials just eliminated from your existence. It is only in such a state that you can be attentive to some otherwise very important things you never paid attention to before. It is only in such a state when you can develop abilities that otherwise would lie dormant in you. We can see this, for example, in Brian as his senses become sharper to detect presences or elements in nature through intuition, smell, sound, etc (e.g. p. 100)
3. "... later he looked back on this time of crying in the corner of the dark cave and thought of it as when he learned the most important rule of survival, which was that feeling sorry for yourself didn't work." (p. 77)

Back to Life
In this age when many kids (and not only kids) are glued to screens, the "outdoor" experience retains its crucially important role in teaching kids (and the rest of us) valuable lessons about life. Some of my best experiences in life were those spent outdoors: camping, mountain-climbing, hiking, etc. I try to convey those experiences to our daughter by providing her with chances to enjoy the great outdoors, especially here in Canada where there are so many excellent places to enjoy nature! These are my "back to life" reflections on Hatchet.