Hatchet by Gary Paulsen Book Review

Hatchet is a novel written by Gary Paulsen; it follows a boy called Brian who has crash landed in the woods, it is a text full of suspense and adventure, he really tries to capture your emotions. Brians is stranded in the middle of the woods he needs food water and shelter to survive. His parents are divorced, and Brian knows a secret about his mum that he wants to tell his dad. Brian runs in to some trouble along the way, he expresses these by using some literary techniques like personification and descriptive language. 

Brian is illustrated as a young boy who is Lonely and furious with his mother. Paulsen uses setting and descriptive language exceptionally well to describe where Brian has exactly ended up for example in the text it says that Brian has crashed on the shore of a lake and made his shelter next to it. The detail with this description gives the reader an extremely clear vison of where Brian is. Paulsen described a lot of the food that Brian found very unique and interestingly for example he described the berries as juicy and ripe, these words would have positioned readers to think that berries would be as amazing as brain would think, this gets the reader interested and inquisitive and is one the things that Paulsen has done extremely well in this novel. The author gives Brian an extensive positive mindset which can also impact and inspire the reader to doing the same, this gives the audience a lot of positive emotion reading this novel and who would not want to read a narrative full of positivity, that’s one of the many reasons that I love this novel and why it's so popular. Paulsen uses these literary techniques to express the idea of Brian being lonely in the wilderness. 

Brian changes physically and also changes his mind set positively when all alone in the wild.  Paulsen uses literary techniques to portray Brian physical and mental changes by giving Brian an extremely persistent midst for example when Brian is making a fish spear and he cannot catch any fish he tries and tries again until he succeeds. This is done well by Paulsen with correct descriptive language and with exaggeration. The author uses short sentences to express Brian mental state by giving not much information and leaving the reader hanging for example when Brian crash lands the plane he says “I could have been done” this leaves the reader thinking and wondering if he is ok or if Hes injured there are just so many questions to be asked with just one short sentence, that’s what just a couple of words can do to the reader. Paulsen is an expert at including flashbacks into this story, for example when Brian had a flashback of when him and his friends went bike riding when Brian broke his ankle, this positions the reader to get a bit emotional because if Brian can't get out of his situation, he may never see his friend again.      

The authors purpose for this novel was to create an adventure and survival story but with some essential adaptation abilities to survive which left readers on edge. Brian had to learn to be patient and persistent. Paulsen used literary techniques like flashbacks, short sentences, exaggeration, descriptive language and lots of emotion to create a meaning of anxiety stress and sadness which eventually turned into positivity and belief. Brian serves as an example to readers by persisting staying positive and never giving up, he inspires people to be able to grow and change.