Hatchet

1
Hatchet
By Gary Paulsen
Realistic Fiction (boys) Travel
Tracker Response from George F.
Webber Summer 07 ELAN
6310 Dr. Linda DeGroff
2
Response Styles

• Summarizer
• Discussion Director
• Passage Picker
• Travel Tracer

3
Summarizer
A young boy, Brian Robeson is on a small plane
flying over northern Canada to be with his father
when the pilot dies and the plane crashes into a
lake. Brian survives the crash. He is stranded
with only a hatchet. He learns from his
mistakes, remembers some stuff from school, and
lives for over 50 days in the wilderness before
he is found and rescued.
4
Discussion Director

• What things didnt Brian eat?
• How would Brian have survived the bitter winter?
• What matters MOST?

5
Passage Picker

• P.99 More than eggs, more than knowledge, more
  than anything this was food.
• P. 129 Food is all.
• P. 148 Always hungry.
• P. 164 First food, because food made strength.
• P. 180 The fish he had been eating all this time
  had to eat, too.

6
Travel Tracer

• The following slide is a map of the setting.
• Following are slides explaining the locations.
• Click on little maps to return to the big map.

7
Travel Tracer - Map
Click Here to go back to the last slide viewed.
8
1. Plane Lake

• Brian is flying the plane as it runs out of
  fuel.
• He sees the lake and just makes it to hit the
  water.
• The plane sinks under the water here.

Page 27-29

• ..Slightly to the right he saw a lake.
  L-shaped, with rounded corners
• blew through the trees, out over the water and
  down, down to slam into the lake., skip once on
  water as hard as concrete

9
2. Comes Ashore

• He survives the plane crash and gets to shore.
• He spends his first day here recovering.
• He stands up and surveys the lake and territory,
  sees the beaver house.

• Lk

Page 39-40

• The lake stretched out slightly below him. He
  was at the base of the L, looking up the long
  part with the short part out to his right.
• Directly across the lakeat the inside corner
  of the L, was a mound of sticks and mud

10
3. Home

• Brians First Good Luck (p. 58) to find
  natural shelter
• Much of his life is centered around his home.
• He discovers fire, keeps food, builds his tools,
  sleeps.
• He survives a tornado here!

Page 57

• His eyes fell upon the stone ridge to his
  left.
• this scooping had left a kind of sideways
  bowl, back in under a ledge.

11
4. Gut Cherries

• His first real sustenance after crashing.
• He eats and eats too much.
• It makes him terribly sick that night, because
  he ate too much.

Page 62

• So he had to look for berry bushes.
• Two hundred yards up there seemed to be a belt
  of thick, lower brush starting

12
5. Raspberries

• Just up from the gut cherries, he finds sweet
  raspberries
• He encounters a bear.
• He carries berries back in his jacket, enjoys
  berry juice.

Page 73-74

• Another hundred yards up the shore there was a
  place
• He heard a noise to his rear, a slight noise,
  and he turned and saw the bear.

13
6. Signal Fire on Cliff

• Brian has made fire, and moves logs up on top of
  the cliff/bluff.
• He does make a signal fire up here.
• He doesnt go up here much otherwise.

Page 106

• At the last trip to the top of the stone bluff
  with wood, he stopped, sat on the point
  overlooking the lake and rested.
• The lake lay before him, twenty or so feet
  below, and he had not seen it this way since he
  had come in the plane.

14
7. The long part of the Lake

• He starts getting around the whole lake.
• He first sees wolves while up at the long part
  of the L
• He is charged by and wounded by a moose.

Page 119 147

• Brian stood at the long part of the L of the
  lake and watched the water..
• Now he stood at the end of the long part of the
  lake and was not the same

15
8. Hatchet in the water.

• After the tornado, the tail of the plane appears
  in the short part of the L.
• He builds raft and works to get the survival bag
  from the plane.
• He drops the hatchet into the water

Page 159 174

• Out in the lake, in the short part of the L,
  something curved and yellow was sticking six or
  eight inches out of the water
• It went straight down past his legs. He felt
  it bump his foot and then go on down