72 pages • 2 hours read
Gary PaulsenHatchet
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1987A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 7-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary
Brian suddenly awakens, screaming for his mother. He is overcome with abdominal pain. He has to crawl out of his shelter and suffers through vomiting and diarrhea for “over an hour” (63). He falls in and out of sleep, dreaming of his mother and the affair. In the morning he decides he made himself sick by eating too many “gut cherries” (65). He goes to the lake to wash himself and is disturbed to see his bloody, swollen reflection. Overcome with emotion, he sits on the bank crying for a long time. Afterward he returns to his shelter and notices that he already calls it home.
He tries eating the gut cherries again, in a moderate portion. He searches for different berries and finds sweet red raspberries. As he gorges on the delicious raspberries, he suddenly notices a bear watching him, interested in the same berry bush. He instinctively runs back to the shelter, but “after he had gone perhaps fifty yards his brain took over […] if the bear had wanted you, his brain said, he would have taken you” (70). Brian realizes the bear was nonthreatening. This gives him courage to return to the berry bush to eat more and fill his jacket with as many pounds as possible. He gets the loot back to his shelter just as a rainstorm begins. He lies in his shelter thinking about the bear and the wonderful feeling of being full of raspberries, and falls asleep with his hatchet for security.
Chapter 8 Summary
Brian wakes to a pungent odor and a low growling sound. He can’t see what is making the slithering sound in his shelter, but he throws his hatchet to scare away whatever creature it is. The hatchet misses the animal but hits the rock wall, causing sparks to fly. Suddenly Brian’s leg is filled with pain from what turn out to be quills, likely from a porcupine. He agonizingly pulls each needle from his leg, some of them tearing as they exit. The pain and loneliness are too much for him, so “he put his head down on his arms across his knees, with stiffness taking his left leg, and cried until he was cried out” (77). Brian learns from this experience that crying and “feeling sorry for yourself” don’t work (77).
Once he falls back asleep, he has visceral dreams about his father, who tries to tell Brian something that he cannot hear. Then he dreams of Terry, who lights a fire in a barbeque pit. When he wakes up, Brian realizes that Terry and his father were trying to show him how to make fire. He suddenly understands that he can use his hatchet to create sparks (like it did when he threw it in self-defense). He knows he will find a way to make fire using his hatchet.
Chapter 9 Summary
Although Brian can easily get sparks from his hatchet, he finds it is “a long way from sparks to fire” (82). He must find a way to trap and use the sparks. After spending a great deal of time collecting bark and raw materials to make a nest for the sparks, Brian realizes that oxygen is what he needs to get his fire going. As he carefully blows on his embers, he finally creates a fire. He is so excited that he shouts, “I’ve got fire! I’ve got it!” (86). Successfully creating fire makes Brian feel less alone, although he wishes he had someone to share his excitement with. He proudly sits near his fire and finally allows himself to think about his parents and what they might be doing.
Chapters 7-9 Analysis
Brian’s past continues to both haunt and support him. He is flooded with memories of his mother’s affair and his parents’ divorce, particularly when he is in physical pain (like the stomach cramps he endures after eating the gut cherries). This does nothing to help him, only increases his misery. As he states in Chapter 8, “the most important rule of survival […] was that feeling sorry for yourself didn’t work” (77). However, when he thinks of good memories with his friend Terry or dreams of his father, Brian feels supported and often gains important insight into how to survive. Both Terry and Brian’s father appear to him in a dream, giving him the nudge he needs to understand how to make fire. As always, the hatchet is central to his success, another reminder of his mother.
Unfortunately, lessons come hard in the wild. Brian only learns that the hatchet can make a spark because he throws it in self-defense before being attacked by a porcupine. However, when he really listens to and observes nature, he finds a harmony and balance he had not appreciated before. When he comes face to face with a bear in the raspberry bushes, his first reaction is fear and panic. But he later recognizes that the bear felt neither of these things. The bear was curious and open, which is the stance Brian needs to adopt to become one with his surroundings. Furthermore, his interaction with the bear reinforces the importance of positive thinking over irrational, fear-based thinking: “It was a big bear, but it did not want you, did not want to cause you harm, and that is the thing to understand here” (71). Brian is learning to think about himself as a part of his surroundings rather than as something separate. His profound loneliness also leads him to seek comfort in animals and inanimate objects, such as the fire he proudly builds: “So much from a little spark. A friend and a guard from a tiny spark” (87).
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By Gary Paulsen
