Hatchet — Chapter 16

About This Passage

Three reasons. First, this is the tornado sentence — a single, deliberately unbroken clause that imitates in syntax what it describes in event. Paulsen refuses a period for as long as the wind refuses to stop, and the reader must feel in the long breath of the sentence what Brian feels in the long breath of the storm. Second, the passage is a catalogue of loss written with quiet precision — the wall, the bed, the fire, the tools, all named, each one representing weeks of earlier work, and each one dispatched with the same four-word verdict: gone out of sight, gone forever. Copying this passage teaches the student that the rhetoric of catastrophe is not hysterical but inventorial — the writer who wants the reader to feel a loss names what was lost, specifically, in the order it was lost. Third, the three violent verbs — whipped, ripping, hammered — do not escalate; they accumulate, each one adding a different mode of injury, and their cumulative effect is the chapter's dramatization of helplessness. Copying these verbs with attention shows the student how a writer assembles the body of a disaster out of ordinary laborer's words rather than ornate ones.

Narration Prompt

In seven or eight sentences, retell chapter sixteen for a peer. Include Brian's list of First Days (First Arrow Day, First Rabbit Day), the 'always hungry' confession that punctures any temptation to celebrate too early, the unreasoned moose attack that injures his ribs and leaves him crawling incrementally from the water, his return to the shelter and the gratitude-list he makes before sleep, the tornado that strips the shelter in a roar 'like a train,' his defiant self-address in the pitch dark, his final wry thought 'I hope the tornado hit the moose,' and the dawn discovery that the tornado has flipped the plane and raised the tail above the water — a revelation whose significance the chapter chooses not yet to unpack.

Discussion Questions

1. Brian opens the chapter naming days by achievement ('First Arrow Day,' 'First Rabbit Day') and then — almost immediately — admits 'Always hungry.' What is the rhetorical function of pairing the proud catalogue with the austere two-word confession? What is Paulsen refusing to let his reader conclude?
2. Brian's moose attack is described as having 'no sense at all to it. Just madness.' Paulsen has Brian repeat the word 'insane' three times. Why does Paulsen place this scene in a chapter that is ultimately about Brian's growth, and what claim is Paulsen making about the relationship between meaning and randomness in the woods?

+ 3 more questions in the complete study guide