Hatchet (Hatchet, #1)

by Gary Paulsen

Brian Robeson

Main character

The thinking started. Always it started with a single word. Divorce.

What he knew and had not told anybody, what he knew about his mother that had caused the divorce, what he knew,

The big split. Brian’s father did not understand as Brian did, knew only that Brian’s mother wanted to break the marriage apart. The split had come and then the divorce, all so fast, and the court had left him with his mother except for the summers

In the summer Brian would live with his father. In the school year with his mother. That’s what the judge said after looking at papers on his desk and listening to the lawyers talk. Talk. Words.

His father was a mechanical engineer who had designed or invented a new drill bit for oil drilling, a self-cleaning, self-sharpening bit.

Brian was riding up from New York with some drilling equipment—it was lashed down in the rear of the plane next to a fabric bag the pilot had called a survival pack, which had emergency supplies in case they had to make an emergency landing—that

Except for the smell. Now there was a constant odor, and Brian took another look at the pilot, found him rubbing the shoulder and down the arm now, the left arm, letting go more gas and wincing. Probably something he ate, Brian thought.

Brian took the sack and opened the top. Inside there was a hatchet,

“The man at the store said you could use it. You know. In the woods with your father.”

She nodded. “Just like a scout. My little scout.” And there was the tenderness in her voice that she had when he was small, the tenderness that she had when he was small and sick, with a cold, and she put her hand on his forehead, and the burning came into his eyes again and he had turned away from her and looked out the window, forgotten the hatchet on his belt and so arrived at the plane with the hatchet still on his belt.

Have students describe the relationship with his mom. Why does it allear so awkward and uncomfortable.

More smell now. Bad. Brian turned again to glance at the pilot who had both hands on his stomach and was grimacing in pain, reaching for the left shoulder again as Brian watched.

And now a jolt took him like a hammerblow, so forcefully that he seemed to crush back into the seat, and Brian reached for him, could not understand at first what it was, could not know. And then he knew. Brian knew. The pilot’s mouth went rigid, he swore and jerked a short series of slams into the seat, holding his shoulder now. Swore and hissed, “Chest! Oh God, my chest is coming apart!”

Describe what happened to the pilot. Use clues to figure it out. Underline what partiuar words indicate the obvious

Brian Robeson was stopped and stricken with a white—flash of horror, a terror so intense that his breathing, his thinking, and nearly his heart had stopped.

He was alone. In the roaring plane with no pilot he was alone. Alone.

Make a prediction about what is about to happen next

C.P.R.—but

He had to try and fly the plane.

Ask students wwyd

cowling

TRANSMITTER 221, was stamped in the metal and it hit him, finally, that this was the radio. The radio. Of course. He had to use the radio. When the pilot had—had been hit that way (he couldn’t bring himself to say that the pilot was dead, couldn’t think it), he had been trying to use the radio.

“I do not know the flight number. My name is Brian Robeson and we left Hampton, New York headed for the Canadian oil fields to visit my father and I do not know how to fly an airplane and the pilot . . .”

He knew airspeed was different from groundspeed but not by how much.

Consoder origami planes for warm up and a math problem to calculate time in air and crash and/or altitude

An hour passed. He picked up the headset and tried again—it was, he knew, in the end all he had—but there was no answer. He felt like a prisoner, kept in a small cell that was hurtling through the sky at what he thought to be 160 miles an hour, headed—he didn’t know where—just headed somewhere until . . . There it was. Until what? Until he ran out of fuel. When the plane ran out of fuel it would go down. Period.

Or he could pull the throttle out and make it go down now. He had seen the pilot push the throttle in to increase speed. If he pulled the throttle back out, the engine would slow down and the plane would go down. Those were his choices.

List the choices available to him