Survival

Author's Note: I wrote this piece to show how much survival can mean to people. Please look at my descriptive words.

In the book The Hatchet a boy named Brian was flying over Canada to see his dad when the pilot had a heart attack.  The plane crashed and miraculously Brian survived the crash.  The only possession he had was a hatchet. In this essay you will learn that survival; is a key attribute to living in this world.

First of Brian’s troubles were when his plane crashed into the middle of Canadian wilderness.  The pilot had a heart attack which caused the plane to dip down and no one to fly it.  Brian had to try to steer the plane into a lake so that he still could survive.  When he landed in the lake Brian had to fight his way out of the plane and then swim to the surface before he ran out of air. 

After Brian got used to the wilderness and had shelter, food and water a tornado hit his camp and forced him to start all over on surviving in the wild.  The only thing he had was his hatchet, like when the plane crashed and he almost died.  This is a good example about how he was doing good in survival, until everything went wrong and made him start all over again.

Once Brian recovered from the tornado and the plane crush he got up and started all over again.  His whole body wanted to shut down and die but he pulled through and lives.  That later made a good choice since this time when he started all over again he did a better job.  Eventually though, he got careless and a moose trampled him.  He got bruises and broken bones but he didn’t die.  This shows the book displayed survival as unforgiving, hard work and if you mess up you don’t get a second chance.

In the book, Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, Katniss was chosen to compete in a giant arena where everything was woods and twenty-four people battled it out, killing each other until there is only one left.  Katniss was a hunter, which made her good at surviving.  She thrived in the games, only relying on herself.  She had to do what Brian did but on top of that she had people trying to kill her!  This shows how survival was also a theme in the Hunger Games but sometimes survival is harder than other times.

These are reasons why The Hatchet was a book about survival and why.  If you were in Brian’s place what would you have done?  Survival can be the theme in many books, whether surviving in the wild or just surviving middle school, although Brian’s situation was a little worse than surviving middle school.