Chapter Summaries
*summaries obtained from: http://thebestnotes.com/booknotes/Hatchet_Paulsen/Hatchet_Study_Guide04.html
Chapters 1-10
Chapter One
Summary
This chapter begins with Brian staring out the window of a Cessna 406, a small airplane carrying him north from New York to the tundra of Canada to live with his father for the summer. He is thirteen years old and the only passenger on this plane, piloted by an older man named either Jim or Jake, a name Brian cannot remember. He has never flown in such a small plane, but that doesn’t concern him as he thinks about the events that had led to his taking this flight. His parents have just divorced, and all the solid things in his life have shattered. Furthermore, he is overwhelmed with what he calls the Secret, something he knows about his mother that makes him weep every time he thinks about it. He is so involved with his thoughts that even the pilot doesn’t seem real, rather a mechanical part of the plane itself.
To make conversation and pass time, the pilot shows Brian how to handle the controls, including the rudder pedals. The boy turns the plane and brings her right and left. The pilot notes that flying is just like every thing else: it just takes learning. Brian goes then back to his thoughts of the Secret, which led to his mother wanting a divorce that left his father totally confused. His custody was placed with his mother except for the summers when he would live with his father who was a mechanical engineer working in the northern oil fields. To Brian, it is all talk and words.
Suddenly the plane lurches to the right, and Brian sees the pilot rubbing his shoulder and smells the gas the pilot has emitted. Brian remembers then the fabric bag in the rear of the plane which is a survival pack containing emergency supplies in case they had to land suddenly. The pilot seems to have no control over the gas he passes, and he continues to rub his arm and shoulder and wince with pain.
In between his concern for the pilot, Brian remembers the ride to the airport with his mother and how she tried to talk to him about what had happened. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her what he knew about her. So she changes the subject and gives him a present she has bought him for the trip. It is a hatchet with a steel handle and rubber handgrip. It is held within a leather case with a brass-riveted belt loop. She insisted he try it on and he would have refused, but he couldn’t bring himself to hear how thin her voice would be if he didn’t. She thinks he looks like “her little scout” and speaks tenderly like she used to do when he was sick. It made him want to cry again and he had turned away from her once more. However, the hatchet still hangs from his belt.
The pilot had now become worse and tells Brian that he has never felt anything like this pain before. He is suddenly jolted backward in the seat and tells Brian that he thinks his chest is coming apart. Brian knows now that that man is having a heart attack. Then, the pilot’s eyes roll back into his head, and the smell becomes even worse. Now Brian knows he is totally alone in a plane with no pilot and the horror that thought brings utterly stops him.
Notes
This chapter lays down the two greatest problems that Brian is facing: his parents’ divorce and being alone in a pilotless plane. It also presents several examples of foreshadowing. First, the fact that the information about his mother is capitalized into the word Secret indicates how devastating this information is for him. Second, the pilot teaching him how to control the plane prepares us for him landing the plane himself. Third, the pilot’s sudden concern with a pain in his shoulder and arm foreshadows his death of a heart attack. Finally, the fact that his mother gave him a hatchet as a going away gift prepares the reader for Brian’s need for a basic tool to survive in the woods.
Chapter Two
Summary
At first, Brian is so frightened by his aloneness in this plane without a pilot that he is unable to do anything. His thoughts go back and forth between calling for help, giving the pilot CPR, and trying to figure out what he should do to land the plane. He finally acts by leveling out the plane the way the pilot had shown him. Then, he notes the words on the dash board - Transmitter 221 - and he recognizes the radio. He knows that he has to get the headset off the pilot. In the process of pulling the microphone switch from the pilot’s belt, his elbow bumps the wheel, pushes it in, and starts the plane on a shallow dive. He releases the switch, grabs the wheel, and finally levels off once again. He puts on the headset and microphone switch and calls out for help, but no one answers. In his frustration, he pounds and screams on the wheel, causing it to jerk up and down. Finally, the awareness that he had to release the mike switch to hear anyone else comes to him from his memories of his uncle’s CB radio. Then, after he releases the switch, he hears a voice telling him to do exactly that. The voice on the other end then calmly explains what information he needs to give him. Brian complies with what he knows, but he doesn’t know where he is or his flight number. Then, he loses contact after his signal begins to break up.
Brian tries for a half hour to make contact again, but all he hears is static. He throws the headset to the floor and thinks that all is hopeless. He tries to figure out what he does know, but realizes that he only has two choices: wait for the plane to run out of gas and fall or push the throttle in and make it happen sooner. Everything in him fights against the idea of making it fall sooner. He feels as if he’s making a mistake to allow the plane to continue to fly as it is, because it’s gradually going farther and farther off course. However, he just can’t end it all immediately, so he continues to keep it level and try the radio periodically. He also runs through his mind the steps he must take to bring the plane down as safely as possible: glide down towards a clearing, slow the plane by pulling the nose back up, and then hit. With so many lakes below him, Brian knows that he will have to land there, especially because the trees would be certain death.
He rehearses in his mind again and again how he will do this. But, all too soon, the engine coughs, roars violently for a second, and then dies. He pushes the plane’s nose down and then throws up.
Notes
This is the first example of the young boy coming of age. Brian must now find a way to save his own life. He is forced to call upon all of his knowledge and understanding that the pilot had given him to find a way to land the plane. He faces moments of hopelessness, fear, frustration, and anger and must find the reserves within his own character to plan how to live. There is no one there to help him. He has only himself and his own strength.
Chapter Three
Summary
Brian’s brain is screaming to him that he’s going to die when he realizes that there aren’t any lakes now below him. He fears having to turn the plane to find one, and he hyperventilates for a moment considering what he must do. Then, suddenly, he sees slightly to his right an L-shaped lake with rounded corners. The plane is facing toward the long part of the L, so he pushes the right rudder pedal gently, and the nose moves over the exact area where he wants to come down. It begins to fall slowly, and then everything seems to happen at once. He falls into a wide space like a stone, even as he is gently pulling the nose up to slow it down even more. The wings catch the pines at the edge of a clearing. Dust and dirt blows into his face in an explosion. The plane slams into the lake, bounces once on the water, and Brian can hear someone screaming. He doesn’t realize it’s his own voice. He pulls himself out of the shattered front window and swims for the surface. He vomits when his head breaks into the air and then swims without knowing what he is or what he is doing. He is still screaming when his hands reach the grass along the shoreline, and he blacks out into nothingness.
Notes
This description of Brian landing the plane is extremely intense both for the character and the reader. The great fear of death is juxtaposed with the even greater desire to live. The fact that the pilot had casually shown him how to control the plane gives him the skills he needs to survive, but his inner strength ultimately makes him act instinctively to escape the water and live.
Chapter Four
Summary
In his unconscious state, Brian remembers the event he now calls the Secret. He and his friend, Terry, had been riding bikes past the Amber Mall when he saw his mother sitting in a station wagon with a strange man with blonde hair. There is more to the memory, but now he only recalls the bikes, the station wagon, the man with his mother, and his hot hate. Then, he opens his eyes and screams. His legs are still in the water. and he feels pain hammering into him. However, he also feels the best part about such an ordeal: he is alive. He blacks out again and doesn’t awaken again until evening. He is able to pull himself out of the water to a small stand of brush where he lays down again and falls into a dreamless sleep.
He awakens again at early morning in a panic, because it seems so dark. It’s only when he turns over that he sees the sky beginning to lighten across the lake. He is in pain all over, bruised and cramping with a sharp throb in his head. However, nothing seems shattered or broken or even sprained that badly. Even the swollen knot on his head seems to be merely bruised. He thinks for a moment about the pilot still strapped in his seat at the bottom of the lake, but his thoughts continue to be disjointed. It takes him an hour or two to adjust to where he is, but he comes vividly awake when the mosquitoes begin to attack. They attack in such masses that his eyes are soon swollen shut, and he can only protect himself with his torn windbreaker. Only when the sun is fully up and making his damp clothes steam do the mosquitoes disappear.
Brian finally stands up and looks at the lake where he sees the reflection of a large bird flying from the top of the real forest. The trees are large with some low brush around them, and everything is so green that the color seems to go into him. He realizes that if he had come down just a little to the left, he would have hit the rocks along the lake, and he would have been destroyed. He wonders if it was just good luck, but reflects that if he had good luck, his parents wouldn’t have divorced, the pilot wouldn’t have died, and he wouldn’t have crashed. He can only shake his head and try not to think about the bad luck. He finds a tall pine, leans up against it, and falls asleep again.
Notes
This chapter is one of acclimation for Brian. He must come to terms with where he is and deal with the shock of crashing in an airplane into a lake. It takes him a whole day to realize he’s alive and accept what has happened to him.
Chapter Five
Summary
This time, when Brian awakens, he is unbelievably thirsty and quite sunburned. He doesn’t know if the water in the lake is safe, and it bothers him to drink where the pilot lies dead, but he forces himself to cup his hands and take a sip. Then, he finds he can’t stop. After he drinks until his stomach is swollen, he promptly climbs back up the bank and throws it all up. However, his thirst is gone, and he is ready to face the reality of where he is. He is alone, and no one knows where he is. However, he is sure they will look for him. In the meantime, he is hungry and must find food.
He remembers Mr. Perpich, his English teacher who always stressed thinking positively, so Brian takes stock of what he does have, rather than what he doesn’t have. He has a few coins in his pocket, a fingernail clipper, a billfold with a twenty dollar bill, and his hatchet. He also has a pair of good tennis shoes, socks, jeans, underwear, and a T-shirt. His windbreaker is hanging on him in tatters, but it may have some use to him eventually. He remembers that Mr. Perpich also said that he was his best and most valuable asset. However, it comes to Brian that he had flown for a long time on a different course, and he might be several hundred miles from the recorded flight plan. Now he knows that they might not find him for a long time, and he even thinks they might never find him. He pushes that thought down to avoid the panic it induces. The only weapon and tool he has is the hatchet, and he realizes that he needs to find some kind of shelter. He has to help himself, because he is all he has.
Notes
This chapter is the next step in Brian’s coming of age. He accepts that he is his own best asset, and that he must begin to help himself. It has taken two days to come to terms with the accident and start to make his survival one that will last.
Chapter Six
Summary
Brian recalls how two years before, he and his friend, Terry, had been fooling around in the park. They pretended they were lost in the woods and talked all afternoon about what they would do in that situation. Of course, they imagined they had all kinds of equipment to help them, but he remembered that they had decided the best shelter would be a lean-to. So now, Brian begins to decide how to build one. He finds on the far side of a ridge a scooped out area under a ledge. The ledge makes a perfect roof over a spot that really isn’t a cave, but gives protection all the same. Besides the overhang, there is a small sand beach leading to the lake and his water supply.
Once he finds his shelter, he becomes concerned once again about finding food. He searches his mind for any TV shows he may have seen about surviving in the wilderness and remembers one on a course that Air Force pilots had to take about surviving in the desert. He recalls how they used a watch crystal to reflect the sun and create a fire, but all he has is a digital watch without a crystal. He also recalls how one of the pilots had found some beans on a bush and had used them with lizard meat to create a stew. He doesn’t have the assets of a desert, but he knows that in this wilderness there must be berry bushes. Mixed into these thoughts is the hate he feels at his mother and the blond-haired man. He believes that if she hadn’t been with the man, there would have been no divorce, and he wouldn’t be in the predicament he is in now.
Brian puts the hateful thoughts to the back of his mind and begins to search along the lake for berry bushes. Several birds in the bushes are eating something he realizes are berries. He begins to attack the bushes where the birds had been feasting in the same way he had attacked the water. Then, he makes a pouch out of his windbreaker and gathers as many of the berries as he can and takes them back to the shelter.
Brian’s next concern is fire. He remembers the part about rubbing two sticks together, but when he tries it, he has no luck. So then, Brian begins to weave sticks together to create a wall to close in his shelter. However, he can’t keep out the mosquitoes, so with his stomach turning over and over from the berries, he curls up, wrapped in the windbreaker in his new shelter.
Notes
Using his own experiences and past memories, Brian takes the next step to help himself: he finds food and he builds a shelter. He sometimes can’t keep down the memories of the Secret or the divorce. But he tries hard not to allow them to obsess him so that he can protect himself in his present predicament.
Chapter Seven
Summary
Brian awakens in the night with severe stomach cramps and screaming for his mother. For over an hour, he vomits and has diarrhea because of the berries with which he gorged himself. Then, he crawls back into his shelter, and because he can’t fall asleep again for a bit, he remembers the mall and his mother with the blonde-haired man. This time, however, the memory continues, and Brian remembers that they weren’t just together in the station wagon; they were kissing passionately. Gradually, the memory fades, and he sleeps again, with the last thought that the Secret was the kiss.
When Brian awakens, he remembers the reaction to what he calls the “gut cherries,” and sets to cleaning up after himself. He goes to the lake and looks into the water. What he sees frightens him - his face is cut and bleeding, swollen and lumpy. His hair is matted and there is a cut on his forehead. His eyes are slits in the middle of all the mosquito bites. He’s also covered with dirt. He is almost overcome with self-pity, and he cries long, wasted tears. But he puts aside the pity and crawls back into the shelter. He picks out only the berries that are fully ripe and eats them carefully, this time spitting out the pits. He even comes to think of his new shelter as “home,” and the thought amazes him, as it makes real how he has changed in just two or thee days.
Later, Brian goes in search of more berries; this time finding raspberries that are full and ripe and much safer to eat. Just as he is eating a few, he hears a slight noise and turns to see a bear. He stands perfectly still out of fear that such a huge animal could have come up behind him with such little noise. The bear helps himself to a few berries and then slowly moves away. Once it is gone, Brian begins to run, but soon comes to a stop when he realizes that the bear had made no move to hurt him. He is not prey for the bear which had only been foraging for berries, just like him. So, he slowly walks back to the berry bushes and begins to gather more and makes it back to his shelter just as a storm breaks overhead. For the first time, he doesn’t think of himself and instead marvels over how he had shared the berries with another being. Nonetheless, he takes precaution and puts the hatchet close beside him as he falls asleep that night.
Notes
This chapter exhibits Brian in the middle of a learning curve. His greed for food led to diarrhea and vomiting, and now he knows to look at what he’s eating more closely. He learns that he can share the food with another being which could be dangerous to him, but had proven to be willing to share the berries with him. He also learns to take more precautions in spite of the bear leaving him alone. He is in a wilderness, and he has no idea what dangers might wait ahead. Finally, he learns that there is no room for self-pity in his predicament. There is no one there to help him or listen and pity him.
Chapter Eight
Summary
In the middle of the night, Brian hears what he thinks is a growl. He sits up and smells something rotten. It reminds him of what a grave might smell like. Then, he hears it slithering near his feet, and he kicks out as hard as he can and throws his hatchet which bounces off the rock with a shower of sparks. At once, his leg is torn with pain as if a hundred needles had been driven in it. The dark shadow that is the slithering sound moves away from him in the dark. Once the shadow is gone for good, Brian feels his leg and discovers a group of needles that had been driven into his calf. A porcupine had wandered into his shelter, and when he had kicked out at it, it had slapped him with its tail of quills. He eventually pulls eight quills out of his leg, leaving him in excruciating pain.
Now, Brian falls into despair again. He believes that he just can’t do all this and cries until he’s all cried out. But he soon comes again to the realization that not only that it is wrong to feel sorry for himself, it also just doesn’t work. He falls asleep and dreams this time of his father and then his friend, Terry. His father seems to be trying to tell him something, mouthing the sounds of Mmmmmm-maaaa. But his father soon fades into the fog, and Terry comes. Terry builds a fire with charcoal, starter fluid, and a flick lighter. He turns in the dream and points to the fire as if to say, “See. A fire.”
Brian becomes frustrated with the dream and awakens with the dim, gray morning light. He eats a few berries and then notices his hatchet where he had thrown it the night before. He picks it up and as he stretches in the sun, the light reflecting off the hatchet, he remembers the dream and realizes the hatchet is the key to it all. When he had thrown the hatchet at the porcupine, it had hit off the stone wall and created sparks. The sparks, he realizes, will make fire.
Notes
Once again, Brian takes another step toward manhood. He learns that in the wilderness, peace can become danger in an instant, when he encounters the porcupine. He learns that despair won’t work, because after he gives into it, all of his problems are still there to be solved. He is reminded through his dreams once again how important it is to build a fire. And he realizes that the hatchet is the key, because striking it against the stone wall will create sparks that can lead to fire.
Chapter Nine
Summary
Brian soon learns that it’s a long way from sparks to fire. He tries several combinations of twigs and dried grass, but the sparks just sputter and die. He then comes to the conclusion that he needs something finer. He first tears up his twenty dollar bill and follows that with fine pieces of birch bark. This lasts a little longer, but still the sparks go out. His next conclusion is that he needs to add oxygen and adds his own gentle breath. Finally, he creates a hot red ball of heat and that bursts into flame. He frantically feeds the new flames with small dead limbs from the pine trees, and the fire continues to burn. Brian thinks to himself that now he has a friend and a guard since the fire burns near the entrance he had created for his shelter. Furthermore, the curve of the rock above his head acts as a perfect flue that carries the smoke up through the cracks in the ledge, but holds the heat where he needs it. He is momentarily satisfied with his accomplishment, but can’t help wondering what his parents are doing at that moment and whether his mother is with him.
Notes
This chapter is yet another step in Brian’s evolution to manhood. Using his own knowledge and his desire to protect himself, he figures out how to build a fire from the sparks of his hatchet. However, he hasn’t yet matured enough to forgive the pain his mother has caused his family and how the Secret is what destroyed it.
Chapter Ten
Summary
At first, Brian can’t bring himself to leave the fire out of fear that it will go out, but he soon realizes that he will need a large wood pile to get through the night. So, he banks his fire with new wood and leaves the shelter to search for wood. He finds three large white pines lying across each other after being blown over by the same storm that left him a clearing to land the plane. They would provide enough wood for many days. He also discovers as he cuts the limbs into smaller logs that the mosquitoes don’t bother him when he’s near the smoke, and that is an especially wonderful discovery. He also comes to the conclusion that he has the means to create a signal fire on top of the rock where the smoke escapes from his fire below. So, Brian spends the rest of the afternoon cutting wood and bringing it back to his shelter. For the first time, he thinks he might be getting a handle on things, and that is a comfort that he hasn’t felt since the crash.
Brian awakens in the middle of the night to the realization that his fire is dying. He quickly builds it up again just in time. He settles to sleep once more when he hears a kind of slithering sound outside the shelter not unlike the sound the porcupine had made. He isn’t as worried this time, because he knows that his fire will protect him. The next morning, he finds strange tracks in the sand that consist of a main center line with claw marks to the side. They lead to a small pile of sand and then back to the water. Again, using his own sense of logic, Brian realizes that the claws were made by a turtle and that in the sand pile are the eggs it had laid in the night. Now, he has a new source of food. He’s not sure at first how to eat them, because even though he has a fire, he has no utensils to cook them. So, he just begins to suck out the inside. At first, the taste nearly makes him vomit them up, but soon, he gets used to the idea and eats six this way. Even though he’s still hungry, he fights it and decides to store them and eat them just one a day. Then, it occurs to him that he had momentarily forgotten that the searchers might come before too long, and he is frightened that he had forgotten. He had to keep hoping.
Notes
This chapter emphasizes the accomplishments Brian has made, but it also emphasizes that he is beginning to - at least, subconsciously - accept that he might be here in the woods for a very long time. That thought is frightening, because it indicates that he may be beginning to give up hope of ever being found, and hope is the most important emotion to never forget.
Summary
This chapter begins with Brian staring out the window of a Cessna 406, a small airplane carrying him north from New York to the tundra of Canada to live with his father for the summer. He is thirteen years old and the only passenger on this plane, piloted by an older man named either Jim or Jake, a name Brian cannot remember. He has never flown in such a small plane, but that doesn’t concern him as he thinks about the events that had led to his taking this flight. His parents have just divorced, and all the solid things in his life have shattered. Furthermore, he is overwhelmed with what he calls the Secret, something he knows about his mother that makes him weep every time he thinks about it. He is so involved with his thoughts that even the pilot doesn’t seem real, rather a mechanical part of the plane itself.
To make conversation and pass time, the pilot shows Brian how to handle the controls, including the rudder pedals. The boy turns the plane and brings her right and left. The pilot notes that flying is just like every thing else: it just takes learning. Brian goes then back to his thoughts of the Secret, which led to his mother wanting a divorce that left his father totally confused. His custody was placed with his mother except for the summers when he would live with his father who was a mechanical engineer working in the northern oil fields. To Brian, it is all talk and words.
Suddenly the plane lurches to the right, and Brian sees the pilot rubbing his shoulder and smells the gas the pilot has emitted. Brian remembers then the fabric bag in the rear of the plane which is a survival pack containing emergency supplies in case they had to land suddenly. The pilot seems to have no control over the gas he passes, and he continues to rub his arm and shoulder and wince with pain.
In between his concern for the pilot, Brian remembers the ride to the airport with his mother and how she tried to talk to him about what had happened. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her what he knew about her. So she changes the subject and gives him a present she has bought him for the trip. It is a hatchet with a steel handle and rubber handgrip. It is held within a leather case with a brass-riveted belt loop. She insisted he try it on and he would have refused, but he couldn’t bring himself to hear how thin her voice would be if he didn’t. She thinks he looks like “her little scout” and speaks tenderly like she used to do when he was sick. It made him want to cry again and he had turned away from her once more. However, the hatchet still hangs from his belt.
The pilot had now become worse and tells Brian that he has never felt anything like this pain before. He is suddenly jolted backward in the seat and tells Brian that he thinks his chest is coming apart. Brian knows now that that man is having a heart attack. Then, the pilot’s eyes roll back into his head, and the smell becomes even worse. Now Brian knows he is totally alone in a plane with no pilot and the horror that thought brings utterly stops him.
Notes
This chapter lays down the two greatest problems that Brian is facing: his parents’ divorce and being alone in a pilotless plane. It also presents several examples of foreshadowing. First, the fact that the information about his mother is capitalized into the word Secret indicates how devastating this information is for him. Second, the pilot teaching him how to control the plane prepares us for him landing the plane himself. Third, the pilot’s sudden concern with a pain in his shoulder and arm foreshadows his death of a heart attack. Finally, the fact that his mother gave him a hatchet as a going away gift prepares the reader for Brian’s need for a basic tool to survive in the woods.
Chapter Two
Summary
At first, Brian is so frightened by his aloneness in this plane without a pilot that he is unable to do anything. His thoughts go back and forth between calling for help, giving the pilot CPR, and trying to figure out what he should do to land the plane. He finally acts by leveling out the plane the way the pilot had shown him. Then, he notes the words on the dash board - Transmitter 221 - and he recognizes the radio. He knows that he has to get the headset off the pilot. In the process of pulling the microphone switch from the pilot’s belt, his elbow bumps the wheel, pushes it in, and starts the plane on a shallow dive. He releases the switch, grabs the wheel, and finally levels off once again. He puts on the headset and microphone switch and calls out for help, but no one answers. In his frustration, he pounds and screams on the wheel, causing it to jerk up and down. Finally, the awareness that he had to release the mike switch to hear anyone else comes to him from his memories of his uncle’s CB radio. Then, after he releases the switch, he hears a voice telling him to do exactly that. The voice on the other end then calmly explains what information he needs to give him. Brian complies with what he knows, but he doesn’t know where he is or his flight number. Then, he loses contact after his signal begins to break up.
Brian tries for a half hour to make contact again, but all he hears is static. He throws the headset to the floor and thinks that all is hopeless. He tries to figure out what he does know, but realizes that he only has two choices: wait for the plane to run out of gas and fall or push the throttle in and make it happen sooner. Everything in him fights against the idea of making it fall sooner. He feels as if he’s making a mistake to allow the plane to continue to fly as it is, because it’s gradually going farther and farther off course. However, he just can’t end it all immediately, so he continues to keep it level and try the radio periodically. He also runs through his mind the steps he must take to bring the plane down as safely as possible: glide down towards a clearing, slow the plane by pulling the nose back up, and then hit. With so many lakes below him, Brian knows that he will have to land there, especially because the trees would be certain death.
He rehearses in his mind again and again how he will do this. But, all too soon, the engine coughs, roars violently for a second, and then dies. He pushes the plane’s nose down and then throws up.
Notes
This is the first example of the young boy coming of age. Brian must now find a way to save his own life. He is forced to call upon all of his knowledge and understanding that the pilot had given him to find a way to land the plane. He faces moments of hopelessness, fear, frustration, and anger and must find the reserves within his own character to plan how to live. There is no one there to help him. He has only himself and his own strength.
Chapter Three
Summary
Brian’s brain is screaming to him that he’s going to die when he realizes that there aren’t any lakes now below him. He fears having to turn the plane to find one, and he hyperventilates for a moment considering what he must do. Then, suddenly, he sees slightly to his right an L-shaped lake with rounded corners. The plane is facing toward the long part of the L, so he pushes the right rudder pedal gently, and the nose moves over the exact area where he wants to come down. It begins to fall slowly, and then everything seems to happen at once. He falls into a wide space like a stone, even as he is gently pulling the nose up to slow it down even more. The wings catch the pines at the edge of a clearing. Dust and dirt blows into his face in an explosion. The plane slams into the lake, bounces once on the water, and Brian can hear someone screaming. He doesn’t realize it’s his own voice. He pulls himself out of the shattered front window and swims for the surface. He vomits when his head breaks into the air and then swims without knowing what he is or what he is doing. He is still screaming when his hands reach the grass along the shoreline, and he blacks out into nothingness.
Notes
This description of Brian landing the plane is extremely intense both for the character and the reader. The great fear of death is juxtaposed with the even greater desire to live. The fact that the pilot had casually shown him how to control the plane gives him the skills he needs to survive, but his inner strength ultimately makes him act instinctively to escape the water and live.
Chapter Four
Summary
In his unconscious state, Brian remembers the event he now calls the Secret. He and his friend, Terry, had been riding bikes past the Amber Mall when he saw his mother sitting in a station wagon with a strange man with blonde hair. There is more to the memory, but now he only recalls the bikes, the station wagon, the man with his mother, and his hot hate. Then, he opens his eyes and screams. His legs are still in the water. and he feels pain hammering into him. However, he also feels the best part about such an ordeal: he is alive. He blacks out again and doesn’t awaken again until evening. He is able to pull himself out of the water to a small stand of brush where he lays down again and falls into a dreamless sleep.
He awakens again at early morning in a panic, because it seems so dark. It’s only when he turns over that he sees the sky beginning to lighten across the lake. He is in pain all over, bruised and cramping with a sharp throb in his head. However, nothing seems shattered or broken or even sprained that badly. Even the swollen knot on his head seems to be merely bruised. He thinks for a moment about the pilot still strapped in his seat at the bottom of the lake, but his thoughts continue to be disjointed. It takes him an hour or two to adjust to where he is, but he comes vividly awake when the mosquitoes begin to attack. They attack in such masses that his eyes are soon swollen shut, and he can only protect himself with his torn windbreaker. Only when the sun is fully up and making his damp clothes steam do the mosquitoes disappear.
Brian finally stands up and looks at the lake where he sees the reflection of a large bird flying from the top of the real forest. The trees are large with some low brush around them, and everything is so green that the color seems to go into him. He realizes that if he had come down just a little to the left, he would have hit the rocks along the lake, and he would have been destroyed. He wonders if it was just good luck, but reflects that if he had good luck, his parents wouldn’t have divorced, the pilot wouldn’t have died, and he wouldn’t have crashed. He can only shake his head and try not to think about the bad luck. He finds a tall pine, leans up against it, and falls asleep again.
Notes
This chapter is one of acclimation for Brian. He must come to terms with where he is and deal with the shock of crashing in an airplane into a lake. It takes him a whole day to realize he’s alive and accept what has happened to him.
Chapter Five
Summary
This time, when Brian awakens, he is unbelievably thirsty and quite sunburned. He doesn’t know if the water in the lake is safe, and it bothers him to drink where the pilot lies dead, but he forces himself to cup his hands and take a sip. Then, he finds he can’t stop. After he drinks until his stomach is swollen, he promptly climbs back up the bank and throws it all up. However, his thirst is gone, and he is ready to face the reality of where he is. He is alone, and no one knows where he is. However, he is sure they will look for him. In the meantime, he is hungry and must find food.
He remembers Mr. Perpich, his English teacher who always stressed thinking positively, so Brian takes stock of what he does have, rather than what he doesn’t have. He has a few coins in his pocket, a fingernail clipper, a billfold with a twenty dollar bill, and his hatchet. He also has a pair of good tennis shoes, socks, jeans, underwear, and a T-shirt. His windbreaker is hanging on him in tatters, but it may have some use to him eventually. He remembers that Mr. Perpich also said that he was his best and most valuable asset. However, it comes to Brian that he had flown for a long time on a different course, and he might be several hundred miles from the recorded flight plan. Now he knows that they might not find him for a long time, and he even thinks they might never find him. He pushes that thought down to avoid the panic it induces. The only weapon and tool he has is the hatchet, and he realizes that he needs to find some kind of shelter. He has to help himself, because he is all he has.
Notes
This chapter is the next step in Brian’s coming of age. He accepts that he is his own best asset, and that he must begin to help himself. It has taken two days to come to terms with the accident and start to make his survival one that will last.
Chapter Six
Summary
Brian recalls how two years before, he and his friend, Terry, had been fooling around in the park. They pretended they were lost in the woods and talked all afternoon about what they would do in that situation. Of course, they imagined they had all kinds of equipment to help them, but he remembered that they had decided the best shelter would be a lean-to. So now, Brian begins to decide how to build one. He finds on the far side of a ridge a scooped out area under a ledge. The ledge makes a perfect roof over a spot that really isn’t a cave, but gives protection all the same. Besides the overhang, there is a small sand beach leading to the lake and his water supply.
Once he finds his shelter, he becomes concerned once again about finding food. He searches his mind for any TV shows he may have seen about surviving in the wilderness and remembers one on a course that Air Force pilots had to take about surviving in the desert. He recalls how they used a watch crystal to reflect the sun and create a fire, but all he has is a digital watch without a crystal. He also recalls how one of the pilots had found some beans on a bush and had used them with lizard meat to create a stew. He doesn’t have the assets of a desert, but he knows that in this wilderness there must be berry bushes. Mixed into these thoughts is the hate he feels at his mother and the blond-haired man. He believes that if she hadn’t been with the man, there would have been no divorce, and he wouldn’t be in the predicament he is in now.
Brian puts the hateful thoughts to the back of his mind and begins to search along the lake for berry bushes. Several birds in the bushes are eating something he realizes are berries. He begins to attack the bushes where the birds had been feasting in the same way he had attacked the water. Then, he makes a pouch out of his windbreaker and gathers as many of the berries as he can and takes them back to the shelter.
Brian’s next concern is fire. He remembers the part about rubbing two sticks together, but when he tries it, he has no luck. So then, Brian begins to weave sticks together to create a wall to close in his shelter. However, he can’t keep out the mosquitoes, so with his stomach turning over and over from the berries, he curls up, wrapped in the windbreaker in his new shelter.
Notes
Using his own experiences and past memories, Brian takes the next step to help himself: he finds food and he builds a shelter. He sometimes can’t keep down the memories of the Secret or the divorce. But he tries hard not to allow them to obsess him so that he can protect himself in his present predicament.
Chapter Seven
Summary
Brian awakens in the night with severe stomach cramps and screaming for his mother. For over an hour, he vomits and has diarrhea because of the berries with which he gorged himself. Then, he crawls back into his shelter, and because he can’t fall asleep again for a bit, he remembers the mall and his mother with the blonde-haired man. This time, however, the memory continues, and Brian remembers that they weren’t just together in the station wagon; they were kissing passionately. Gradually, the memory fades, and he sleeps again, with the last thought that the Secret was the kiss.
When Brian awakens, he remembers the reaction to what he calls the “gut cherries,” and sets to cleaning up after himself. He goes to the lake and looks into the water. What he sees frightens him - his face is cut and bleeding, swollen and lumpy. His hair is matted and there is a cut on his forehead. His eyes are slits in the middle of all the mosquito bites. He’s also covered with dirt. He is almost overcome with self-pity, and he cries long, wasted tears. But he puts aside the pity and crawls back into the shelter. He picks out only the berries that are fully ripe and eats them carefully, this time spitting out the pits. He even comes to think of his new shelter as “home,” and the thought amazes him, as it makes real how he has changed in just two or thee days.
Later, Brian goes in search of more berries; this time finding raspberries that are full and ripe and much safer to eat. Just as he is eating a few, he hears a slight noise and turns to see a bear. He stands perfectly still out of fear that such a huge animal could have come up behind him with such little noise. The bear helps himself to a few berries and then slowly moves away. Once it is gone, Brian begins to run, but soon comes to a stop when he realizes that the bear had made no move to hurt him. He is not prey for the bear which had only been foraging for berries, just like him. So, he slowly walks back to the berry bushes and begins to gather more and makes it back to his shelter just as a storm breaks overhead. For the first time, he doesn’t think of himself and instead marvels over how he had shared the berries with another being. Nonetheless, he takes precaution and puts the hatchet close beside him as he falls asleep that night.
Notes
This chapter exhibits Brian in the middle of a learning curve. His greed for food led to diarrhea and vomiting, and now he knows to look at what he’s eating more closely. He learns that he can share the food with another being which could be dangerous to him, but had proven to be willing to share the berries with him. He also learns to take more precautions in spite of the bear leaving him alone. He is in a wilderness, and he has no idea what dangers might wait ahead. Finally, he learns that there is no room for self-pity in his predicament. There is no one there to help him or listen and pity him.
Chapter Eight
Summary
In the middle of the night, Brian hears what he thinks is a growl. He sits up and smells something rotten. It reminds him of what a grave might smell like. Then, he hears it slithering near his feet, and he kicks out as hard as he can and throws his hatchet which bounces off the rock with a shower of sparks. At once, his leg is torn with pain as if a hundred needles had been driven in it. The dark shadow that is the slithering sound moves away from him in the dark. Once the shadow is gone for good, Brian feels his leg and discovers a group of needles that had been driven into his calf. A porcupine had wandered into his shelter, and when he had kicked out at it, it had slapped him with its tail of quills. He eventually pulls eight quills out of his leg, leaving him in excruciating pain.
Now, Brian falls into despair again. He believes that he just can’t do all this and cries until he’s all cried out. But he soon comes again to the realization that not only that it is wrong to feel sorry for himself, it also just doesn’t work. He falls asleep and dreams this time of his father and then his friend, Terry. His father seems to be trying to tell him something, mouthing the sounds of Mmmmmm-maaaa. But his father soon fades into the fog, and Terry comes. Terry builds a fire with charcoal, starter fluid, and a flick lighter. He turns in the dream and points to the fire as if to say, “See. A fire.”
Brian becomes frustrated with the dream and awakens with the dim, gray morning light. He eats a few berries and then notices his hatchet where he had thrown it the night before. He picks it up and as he stretches in the sun, the light reflecting off the hatchet, he remembers the dream and realizes the hatchet is the key to it all. When he had thrown the hatchet at the porcupine, it had hit off the stone wall and created sparks. The sparks, he realizes, will make fire.
Notes
Once again, Brian takes another step toward manhood. He learns that in the wilderness, peace can become danger in an instant, when he encounters the porcupine. He learns that despair won’t work, because after he gives into it, all of his problems are still there to be solved. He is reminded through his dreams once again how important it is to build a fire. And he realizes that the hatchet is the key, because striking it against the stone wall will create sparks that can lead to fire.
Chapter Nine
Summary
Brian soon learns that it’s a long way from sparks to fire. He tries several combinations of twigs and dried grass, but the sparks just sputter and die. He then comes to the conclusion that he needs something finer. He first tears up his twenty dollar bill and follows that with fine pieces of birch bark. This lasts a little longer, but still the sparks go out. His next conclusion is that he needs to add oxygen and adds his own gentle breath. Finally, he creates a hot red ball of heat and that bursts into flame. He frantically feeds the new flames with small dead limbs from the pine trees, and the fire continues to burn. Brian thinks to himself that now he has a friend and a guard since the fire burns near the entrance he had created for his shelter. Furthermore, the curve of the rock above his head acts as a perfect flue that carries the smoke up through the cracks in the ledge, but holds the heat where he needs it. He is momentarily satisfied with his accomplishment, but can’t help wondering what his parents are doing at that moment and whether his mother is with him.
Notes
This chapter is yet another step in Brian’s evolution to manhood. Using his own knowledge and his desire to protect himself, he figures out how to build a fire from the sparks of his hatchet. However, he hasn’t yet matured enough to forgive the pain his mother has caused his family and how the Secret is what destroyed it.
Chapter Ten
Summary
At first, Brian can’t bring himself to leave the fire out of fear that it will go out, but he soon realizes that he will need a large wood pile to get through the night. So, he banks his fire with new wood and leaves the shelter to search for wood. He finds three large white pines lying across each other after being blown over by the same storm that left him a clearing to land the plane. They would provide enough wood for many days. He also discovers as he cuts the limbs into smaller logs that the mosquitoes don’t bother him when he’s near the smoke, and that is an especially wonderful discovery. He also comes to the conclusion that he has the means to create a signal fire on top of the rock where the smoke escapes from his fire below. So, Brian spends the rest of the afternoon cutting wood and bringing it back to his shelter. For the first time, he thinks he might be getting a handle on things, and that is a comfort that he hasn’t felt since the crash.
Brian awakens in the middle of the night to the realization that his fire is dying. He quickly builds it up again just in time. He settles to sleep once more when he hears a kind of slithering sound outside the shelter not unlike the sound the porcupine had made. He isn’t as worried this time, because he knows that his fire will protect him. The next morning, he finds strange tracks in the sand that consist of a main center line with claw marks to the side. They lead to a small pile of sand and then back to the water. Again, using his own sense of logic, Brian realizes that the claws were made by a turtle and that in the sand pile are the eggs it had laid in the night. Now, he has a new source of food. He’s not sure at first how to eat them, because even though he has a fire, he has no utensils to cook them. So, he just begins to suck out the inside. At first, the taste nearly makes him vomit them up, but soon, he gets used to the idea and eats six this way. Even though he’s still hungry, he fights it and decides to store them and eat them just one a day. Then, it occurs to him that he had momentarily forgotten that the searchers might come before too long, and he is frightened that he had forgotten. He had to keep hoping.
Notes
This chapter emphasizes the accomplishments Brian has made, but it also emphasizes that he is beginning to - at least, subconsciously - accept that he might be here in the woods for a very long time. That thought is frightening, because it indicates that he may be beginning to give up hope of ever being found, and hope is the most important emotion to never forget.