45 pages • 1 hour read •
Guts: The True Stories Behind Hatchet and the Brian Books
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Chapters 4-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “Killing to Live: Hunting and Fishing With Primitive Weapons”
In this chapter, Paulsen describes the weapons, skills, techniques, and scenarios that make for a good hunter. Unlike the nonlinear format of earlier chapters, this one tracks Paulsen’s progression from a young, untested rifle hunter to a small-game bow hunter and eventually to the big-game bow hunting that inspired the hunting scene in Hatchet.
Paulsen describes his first gun: a Remington single-shot .22 rifle; and his first kill: a duck shot from a ditch while it sat in the water. Paulsen writes, “It was all wrong, of course, and illegal, and very un-sporting. To use a rifle on a duck, to shoot it sitting. All wrong” (Guts: 68). This event acts as a specific starting point for Paulsen’s hunting journey, one that will evolve over the years such that he looks back on this first kill with distaste for his early ignorance.
Hunting soon becomes central to Paulsen’s life as a young man in northern Minnesota, and he spends every hour not in school deep in the woods or on the water. He makes a decent income selling rabbit, which he spends on food and clothing, and weapon parts.
Eventually Paulsen comes to dislike firearms because of the shattering sound that accompanies each discharge. “It’s as if the noise of the rifle kills the whole woods,” he explains (Guts: 74). Firearms are humane and quick but disrupt the woods to the point of the hunter always being alien among them. With a bow, in contrast, the natural flow of the forest is preserved. Paulson cannot afford a bow, so he makes one out of a lemon wood stave purchased for two dollars. He uses a how-to manual from the famous archer Howard Hill and refines it by feel and touch. He painstakingly builds arrows and a quiver. The process is described in intricate, loving detail, highlighting Paulsen’s analytical mind.
On his first trip into the woods with the new bow, Paulsen misses with every attempt, which infuriates him because he is used to the accuracy of the rifle. He pauses his hunt to investigate why his accuracy is failing and discovers that by looking into the center of his target without focusing, he gets closer. Relieved, he returns to hunting and kills a grouse with his first shot. These problem-solving survival skills appear throughout Hatchet, as Brian learns to hunt by trial and error.
After proving his new strategy works, he makes larger arrows for larger game. In detail, Paulsen describes the arrow heads needed for bigger game, how to get them, sharpen them, install them on specific types of wood, and use them in a hunt. Through trial and error, again, Paulsen teaches himself this new skill. Paulsen offers this backstory so that the hunting and killing in Hatchet has real-world context.
Paulsen writes, “It was my second kill of a deer with a bow that truly applies to Brian’s hunting in Hatchet” (Guts: 96). Paulsen describes the setting as a post-storm autumn when hunting isn’t pleasant. He sets off into a swamp, the water filling his boots, visibility limited by vegetation. Suddenly a silence ensues, followed by a bounding sound, which alerts and terrifies Paulsen such that he readies his bow. A massive buck comes leaping through the vegetation, and Paulsen releases the arrow. The buck crashes into Paulsen, breaking the bow, scattering the arrows, and leveling him. He succeeded but now he has to get the massive buck into town to process the meat, and it weighs more than him.
By nightfall, he has not succeeded in getting back to his bike by the road, so he makes camp and cooks some of the meat. The wolves come, but do not attack. In the morning, he skins the buck and builds a harness from the skin, but the going remains slow, and he is tired. Paulsen wonders if he can just stay in the woods: “my folks probably wouldn’t miss me— they didn’t know where I was half the time,” though he decides against it because his teachers might notice his absence (Guts: 110). Eventually, he gets the buck home and hangs it in rafters, falling asleep immediately after. Although there were many more hunts and kills, this is the one that became Brian’s famous defensive kill in Hatchet.
Chapter 5 Summary: “Eating Eyeballs and Guts or Starving: The Fine Art of Wilderness Nutrition”
In Chapter 3, Paulsen claims the key to survival is knowledge. He explains that many early trappers died in their first year in the wild of malnutrition and illness because they simply didn’t have the knowledge of what to eat or how to safely prepare it. Chapter 5 dispels the romanticized version of wilderness survival, honing in on the dirty, slimy, and disgusting aspects of living outdoors. The chapter tracks how Paulsen began as a boy with little knowledge, but through curiosity and trial and error, he emerges a man with life-saving survival skills. “For a considerable time, in a very real way, I lived not unlike Brian in Hatchet. I would head into the woods with nothing but my bow… and a dozen arrows, a small package of salt, some matches and little else” (Guts: 115). Paulsen taught himself how to be a part of the wilderness.
Paulsen first tries organs after killing and eating squirrel meat, only to find he is still hungry. “Hunger makes the best sauce,” Paulsen writes of his empty stomach longing glances at a pile of raw organs (117). The hungrier he gets, the more things he will try to eat. Over time, he learns not to waste any part of an animal. Paulsen lists the things he’s eaten over the years, including snake, seal blood, rabbit brain, fish eyeballs, and more, each with an accompanying story.
To ensure everything in Hatchet is realistic, Paulsen attempts to start a fire with a hatchet, finding it a difficult, multi-day task. When the spark finally holds, Paulsen claims it is one of the highest highs of his life. In another attempt to ensure Hatchet is honest, accurate, and real, Paulsen attempts to eat the inedible. Paulsen’s dog cart runs over a massive snapping turtle laying eggs on a trail, destroying the nest and scaring away the turtle. Paulsen is then in the process of writing Hatchet and realizes Brian would certainly find turtle eggs and be curious about them. Thus, Paulsen, for the sake of literary honesty and in the spirit of research, sucks down a raw turtle egg. He cannot keep it down, and although he tries three times, it is a failed experiment.
Chapters 4-5 Analysis
More than other chapters, these two demonstrate the dearth of ability Paulsen has gleaned over the years. His survival skills, hunting prowess, and knowledge of the wild is on full display. Chapter 4 offers a divergence from the structure of earlier chapters, which feature vignettes from Paulsen’s life around specific survival themes. Chapter 4 is a chronological account of Paulsen’s evolution from novice to expert hunter, and the text focuses on the specific kill that inspired the hunt in Hatchet. Chapter 5 features a return to the thematic structure of earlier chapters and covers wilderness nutrition as told through the author’s encounters with unconventional cuisine. With these chapters, Paulsen demonstrates his wealth of hunting, trapping, skinning, fishing, and foraging knowledge, and shows how he learned some of the many survival skills through trial and error, as Brian does in Hatchet. This both legitimizes Brian’s fictional experiences and gives readers a practical guide to use when in need of survival skills. Paulsen gifts his young readers, who are likely interested in Paulsen’s lifestyle, priceless knowledge, passing down information much in the way Paulsen refers to in humanity’s past. People used to inherit important survival knowledge—Paulsen imparts this knowledge to his readers as many passed on knowledge before him.
As in the first chapter, Paulsen’s sense of humor and positive outlook continue to define his reactions to the extreme wilderness situations he faces. Humor can diffuse trauma, strip ego out of chaos, and offer a positive view of an otherwise negative encounter. Humor allows Paulsen to act as observer in the incident where a moose rams their farm truck: “The farmer used words I would not hear again until I enlisted in the army” (Guts: 37). In another incident, Paulsen uses his positive mindset and sense of humor to insulate himself. While attempting to eat turtle eggs, Paulsen thinks they, “tasted the way I imagine Vaseline would taste if, somehow, it were rotten. I looked at the horizon and thought of wonderful things, of ice cream and steak and the apple pies my grandmother used to bake for me…” (Guts: 132). Paulsen writes comically about the absurdity of these events, and other such harrowing moments, demonstrating a core principal in survival theory: that a positive outlook inspires a positive outcome. In Hatchet, similarly, Paulsen shows how important a good outlook is to survival. Brian survives not because he has the skills, but because he keeps trying, keeps learning, and adapts. After the crash, Brian believes it will be okay because, “they would find him (Hatchet: 54). He quickly realizes that survival is his responsibility, and his outlook improves: “I have to get motivated,” and then; “Right now I’m all I’ve got. I have to do something” (Hatchet: 55).
In these chapters, Paulsen delves into a justification for hunting and fishing. Without judgement or scorn on the opposing view, Paulsen writes: “There are people who say that [hunting] is wrong, and perhaps they are right—though virtually nothing in nature dies of old age except man and I’m not sure of the morality or immorality of their claim” (Guts: 71). Rather than a justification of sportsmanship or heritage or conquest, Paulsen hones in on one of the economics of selling rabbits for fur: “Two dollars a day in those days was as much as I made working on farms in the summer; men worked in factories for only eight dollars a day” (Guts: 71). Later, after a bow kill, Paulsen says he “felt the sadness that comes with killing when you hunt but also the elation that comes with having succeeded—it makes for an odd mixture of emotions” (Guts: 105). He does not shy away from the inherent contradiction of killing to live, or the emotions that killing inspires in him. In the book, Paulsen carefully explains his love for the wilderness and the justification for hunting—if done correctly. While Paulsen’s first kill, a sitting duck, is one of his biggest regrets, he imparts wisdom to readers about the morality of killing out of need while assuming a role in the natural world.
In the majority of the vignettes capturing Paulsen’s childhood, he is alone. The Impact of Solitude on Coming of Age is thematically present in Brian’s life and in Paulsen’s own life. Paulsen greatly values the isolation he experienced, and feels he is a stronger version of himself because of it. With these snippets, a picture of Paulsen’s childhood emerges in which he is responsible beyond his years, often out of necessity. His parents are not present, and he has no one who teaches him to hunt, fish, or survive outdoors. Rather, Paulsen describes his parents as drunks who do not know where he is most of the time. He traps rabbits to earn money that he uses on clothing and food and bow parts. At 12 and 13 years old, Paulsen is working a summer farm job, providing food, and bringing in a decent income. When he kills a bird, he cooks it himself, with no mention of a parent helping to feed him. Paulsen does not describe his childhood as one of neglect or indifference, but their absence in the novel is noticeable and telling. Meanwhile, Paulsen references only “farming uncles” and a few friends, because he undertook the majority of his outdoor adventures alone.
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