History Main / Hatchet

* ''[[Literature/BriansSaga Hatchet]]'' - The first novel in''Literature/BriansSaga'', a [[{{Robinsonade}} wilderness survival]] series by Gary Paulsen about [[KidsWildernessEpic a boy stranded in the Canadian wilderness]].

* ''[[Literature/BriansSaga Hatchet]]'' - The first novel in the ''Literature/BriansSaga'' [[{{Robinsonade}} wilderness survival]] series by Gary Paulsen about [[KidsWildernessEpic a boy stranded in the Canadian wilderness]].

* ''Film/Hatchet'' - A series of {{troperrific}} {{slasher movie}}s about the murderous ghost of a horribly deformed boy haunting a Louisiana bayou.

[[redirect:Literature/BriansSaga]]

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http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/hatchet_1937.jpg
''If you're looking for the {{slasher movie}}, [[Film/{{Hatchet}} click here]].''

A [[ShownTheirWork well-researched]] deconstruction of the KidsWildernessEpic genre written by GaryPaulsen in 1987. It won a NewberyMedal and spawned a number of sequels.

''Hatchet'', the first novel centers around a 13 year old boy named Brian. His parents are divorced and live far apart, and the novel opens up with Brian riding on a small plane to go live with his father for the summer. [[ChekhovsGun His mother gives him a hatchet]] as a gift before he leaves to visit his father, but frankly he thinks it's kind of a crappy present. On the way there, the pilot has a heart attack and Brian ends up taking control of the plane until he can crash land in a lake. The rest of the book deals Brian's struggles to survive in the Canadian wilderness.

''Brian's Winter'' is an alternate continuity that doesn't lead to Brian getting rescued at the end of ''Hatchet''. Because ''Hatchet'' had Brian rescued within a few months, all of them taking place during the summer, ''Brian's Winter'' covers what Brian would have to do to survive if he was [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin stranded in the wilderness for the winter]].

''The River'' has the government send a researcher into the wilderness with Brian to study the techniques he used to survive. The researcher ends up going into a coma, and Brian has to struggle to bring him down a river to get back to civilization.

''Brian's Hunt'' is the final novel, which opens with Brian finding out that a bear has killed a group of people who were important to him. He goes on a hunt to bring the bear to justice.

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!!This book includes tropes such as:

* TheAloner
* AlternateTimeline: ''Brian's Winter'' and ''Brian's Hunt''.
* AmbiguousGender: Not being an expert, Brian can't tell the gender of animals that aren't highly sexually dimorphic. When a skunk moves next door to him, he notices that it waddles just like his Aunt Betty, so he calls it Betty and thinks of it as female.
* AnAxeToGrind: Brian uses his hatchet as a tool 90% of the time, but he does end up throwing it at porcupine.
* AwesomeButImpractical: Brian's first bow: he whittles it out of hard wood, carves it until it not only looks functional, but is beautiful and the first time he tries to use it, it splinters explosively and nearly blinds him.
* {{Bambification}}: One of the few animals that doesn't end up hurting Brian. Not true the other way around, though...
* BigBadassWolf: Brian sees and hears wolves from time to time, but wisely, he has a healthy respect for them and leaves them alone. He even gets to scavenge one of their kills.
* BuffySpeak: Brian adopts a form of this when he's in the wilderness, making up names for unfamiliar animals. He also finds that having his thoughts racing around at a million miles an hour is actually counterproductive, so he even adopts a form of Buffy ''Thought''.
* CanYouHearMeNow: Cell phones weren't commonplace when the book was published, but Brian manages to find an emergency radio in the supplies in the plane. In the main continuity he gets rescued because of this, but in the alternate continuity, the radio fails to work and he has to spend winter in the wilderness.
* [[{{Ptitlexn9xzsjd5fif}} Chekhov's Gun]]: Brian's mother gives him a hatchet as a present before he leaves because she thinks Brian will be able to find a good use for it when he's up in the woods with his father. Brian initially thinks it's a really lame present, but it ends up being his most useful and valuable possession when he gets stranded.
* [[{{Ptitleueuf9cfu}} Everything's Smellier With Skunks]]: In the first book Brian provokes a skunk that is eating his turtle eggs and he's sprayed at point blank range. He expects it to just be smelly, because he's smelled dead skunks on the road before, but he temporarily loses his vision and ends up writhing on the ground and retching half the night. In the second book a skunk takes up residence beside his shelter, and at first he's annoyed, but after he royally pisses off a bear, the skunk ends up saving his life. He even names her Betty, after his aunt.
* [[{{ptitleeyyr8ln8spjv}} Everything's Worse With Bears]]: Brian's encounters with bears rarely turn out well. The first time he meets a bear, he's merely lying in its way and can't get out of his sleeping bag fast enough. He gets lucky and the bear cuffs him aside leaving only a few bruises and small scratches. The second time... he kicks a bear.
* ForeignQueasine: Initially Brian is {{Squick}}ed out at the prospect of eating raw turtle eggs, but he grows to enjoy it. Similarly in ''River'', the man Brian takes into the woods has a similar reaction when Brian suggests finding stumps and digging them open to eat the grubs inside.
* GoMadFromTheIsolation: Even though Brian is totally cut off from other people, it's not usually an issue during the summer because he's usually so busy trying to do things like gather food or improve his shelter. In the winter, though, he has a ton of wood and food stockpiled and he occasionally gets trapped inside by the snow. Naturally he starts to go a little stir-crazy, and he invents people in his head to talk to.
* HarmfulToMinors: Brian's time in the woods eventually changes him and makes him unable to live with the rest of society
* HollywoodHeartAttack: [[MemeticMutation He's having chest pains!]] To be fair, the pilot having the heart attack also seems to also have the lesser-known symptom of feeling like he's about to have an intense bout of diarrhea.
* KeepingSecretsSucks: Brian's mother cheated on his father, and Brian witnesses it but keeps quiet.
* KidsWildernessEpic: The many near-death experiences of the protagonist and gritty realism of the situation make this novel more of a deconstruction of the genre than anything
* LonersAreFreaks: Brian, when he returns to civilization.
* RealityIsUnrealistic: During the winter, Brian hears "gunshot" sounds, which are actually exploding trees.
* RobbingTheCrusoe: A bit of a subversion. Brian isn't stranded on an island, but deep in the Canadian wilderness, far from civilization. He doesn't even know which way is north. Staying put is arguably the smartest thing to do, as that's where rescue teams are most likely to search and he doesn't know if traveling for days in any particular direction might lead him to become stuck there without a water source.
* ShownTheirWork: In spades. The book gives detailed descriptions of how to start fire with flint and steel, making working arrowheads and the problems that are run into when attempting to spear fish.
** That may be because the author, Gary Paulsen, has done all these things. He has lived in the wilderness by himself. He probably had more supplies than the clothes on his back and a hatchet, but that's beside the point.
* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism: These books take a less idealized stance on wilderness survival than most other books aimed at children. Mistakes that might be found funny in other books, like mosquitoes, eating too many unripe cherries or being sprayed by a skunk, have a much more unpleasant and lasting impact on the protagonist.
* StrangerInAFamiliarLand: Brian is amazed at western society once he returns home. He can never quite get used to how much food there is in a supermarket.
* SuperPersistentPredator: In ''Brian's Hunt'' a bear kills the family that [[spoiler: rescues Brian in the ''Brian's Winter'']], and Brian vows to hunt the bear down and kill it. Later on when studying the bear's tracks he realises that the bear is also stalking ''him''.
* TaughtByExperience: Books and television may tell you that skunks smell bad, but experience will be the one that teaches you that a good way to end up blind and vomiting for hours is to piss off a skunk.
* ThankYourPrey: Brian leaves the heads of large prey on trees to thank them.
* TooDumbToLive: Understandably, Brian makes a lot of costly mistakes in the Canadian wilderness, but the worst is when he decides to kick a bear that's been eating some rabbit remains in his camp. [[WhatAnIdiot He kicks. A bear]].
* [[UnreliableNarrator Uninformed Narration]]: Being that the book is from Brian's perspective, he doesn't know the names of all the animals he encounters, so the narration labels them in broad terms. The end of the book lays out what individual species were actually present, and ends on an unexpectedly funny note with, "[[ShapedLikeItself and the moose was a moose.]]"
* [[{{DogFoodDiet}} Wolf Food Diet]]: Brian scavenges the uneaten bits of deer that some wolves left behind.

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<<|{{Literature}}|>>

A [[ShownTheirWork well-researched]] deconstruction of the KidsWildernessEpic genre written by Gary Paulsen in 1987. It won a NewberyMedal and spawned a number of sequels.

A [[ShownTheirWork well-researched]] deconstruction of the KidsWildernessEpic genre written by Gary Paulsen. It centers around a boy named Brian after he crash lands in the Canadian wilderness during a plane trip to visit his father. It's a Newberry medal winner that spawned a number of sequels.

This book includes tropes such as:

* [[{{Ptitleueuf9cfu}} Everything's Smellier With Skunks]]: In the first book Brian provokes a skunk that is eating his turtle eggs and he's sprayed at point blank range. He expects it to just be smelly, because he's smelled dead skunks on the road before, but he temporarily loses his vision and ends up writhing on the ground and retching half the night. In the second book a skunk takes up residence beside his shelter, and at first he's annoyed, but after he royally pisses off a bear the skunk ends up saving his life. He even names her Betty, after his aunt.

* BetterThanItSounds: It's about a boy alone in the woods with a hatchet

* CrowningMomentOfFunny: "I hope the tornado hit the moose."

* {{Sequelitis}}: YourMilageMayVary on the quality of the sequel novels.

* {{Squick}}: The scene in ''Hatchet'' where Brian swims into the sunken plane to retrieve its cache of emergency gear and sees the plane's dead pilot... after months of rotting in the water. He then throws up into the water all around himself.

* AwesomeButImpractical (Brian's first bow: he whittles it out of hard wood, carves it until it not only looks functional, but is beautiful and the first time he tries to use it, it splinters explosively and nearly blinds him.)
* BetterThanItSounds (It's about a boy alone in the woods with a hatchet)
* CanYouHearMeNow (Cell phones weren't commonplace when the book was published, but Brian manages to find an emergency radio in the supplies in the plane. In the main continuity he gets rescued because of this, but in the alternate continuity, the radio fails to work and he has to spend winter in the wilderness.
* HarmfulToMinors (Brian's time in the woods eventually changes him and makes him unable to live with the rest of society)
* KidsWildernessEpic (The many near-death experiences of the protagonist and gritty realism of the situation make this novel more of a deconstruction of the genre than anything)
* RealityIsUnrealistic (During the winter, Brian hears "gunshot" sounds, which are actually exploding trees. )
* {{Sequelitis}} (YourMilageMayVary on the quality of the sequel novels)
* ShownTheirWork (In spades. The book gives detailed descriptions of how to start fire with flint and steel, making working arrowheads and the problems that are run into when attempting to spear fish).

* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism (These books take a less idealized stance on wilderness survival than most other books aimed at children. Mistakes that might be found funny in other books, like mosquitoes, eating too many unripe cherries or being sprayed by a skunk, have a much more unpleasant and lasting impact on the protagonist.)
* {{Squick}} (The scene in ''Hatchet'' where Brian swims into the sunken plane to retrieve its cache of emergency gear and sees the plane's dead pilot... after months of rotting in the water. He then throws up into the water all around himself.)
* TaughtByExperience (Books and television may tell you that skunks smell bad, but experience will be the one that teaches you that a good way to end up blind and vomiting for hours is to piss off a skunk)
* TooDumbToLive (Understandably, Brian makes a lot of costly mistakes in the Canadian wilderness, but the worst is when he decides to kick a bear that's been eating some rabbit remains in his camp. [[WhatAnIdiot He kicks. A bear]].)
* [[UnreliableNarrator Uninformed Narration]] (Being that the book is from Brian's perspective, he doesn't know the names of all the animals he encounters, so the narration labels them in broad terms. The end of the book lays out what individual species were actually present, and ends on an unexpectedly funny note with, "[[ShapedLikeItself and the moose was a moose.]]"

*TooDumbToLive (Understandably, Brian makes a lot of costly mistakes in the Canadian wilderness, but the worst is when he decides to kick a bear that's been eating some rabbit remains in his camp. [[TooDumbToLive He kicks. A bear]].)