Guts: The True Stories Behind Hatchet and the Brian Books

For Brian near the conclusion of the Hatchet series, living a life outside of the wilderness is no longer an option. He cannot return to civilization because he has seen through the guise. Life in the forest removed the blinders that come with living in civilization, and Brian ever after struggled to fit in, make friends, and follow rules. Like Brian, Paulsen skips school, earns low grades, and has few friends. He struggles in sports and suffers from the frequent moves associated with his father’s military service. Paulsen only finds himself when he steps into the woods and leaves society behind. Like Brian, Paulsen finds his path is one that is untrodden and must be forged alone through difficult terrain.

Like Brian, Paulsen is compelled to return to the woods, where he is happy. Paulsen writes that, “The wilderness pulled at me—still does—in a way that at first baffled me and then became a wonder for me” (Guts: 70). Like Brian, Paulsen is happiest in nature, and builds a life where he can spend as much time as possible outdoors, the remaining days spent writing about his love of the forest. Paulsen’s life is the continuation, in many ways, of Brian’s life after the Hatchet series ends. He never betrays the wild, remains curious and self-reliant until the end, and finds a way to share his hard-won skills and stories with generations of young people through his novels.

Brian’s and Paulsen’s characterizations are similar, showing the extent to which Paulsen’s own childhood informed the creation of Brian and his character arc. In the Hatchet series, Brian’s self-reliance becomes a defining characteristic of both his character and his ability to survive. Though he begins the novel in fear, he concludes the Hatchet series as a young man transformed by the wilderness into a capable, curious, and self-reliant man. Throughout Guts, Paulsen highlights The Impact of Solitude on Coming of Age in how his own childhood in northern Minnesota’s rugged wilderness created the man that he became: one of self-reliance, determination, and curiosity. The final book in the Hatchet series sees Brian at age 16, capable and comfortable in the Canadian forest. Paulsen, on the other hand, cannot live forever in the woods as a wide-eyed youth. He goes on to experience adulthood’s many disappointments, losses, and the crushing weight of civilization. The magic of the Hatchet series lies in the immortality of nature, rather than the humans who briefly inhabit it. While Paulsen can never return to his magical days experiencing the wilderness and surviving in harmony with it, his novels offer snapshots of what his childhood was like, and the transformative power of finding home in nature.

Wilderness survival is a high-stakes scenario in which a person must rely on his or herself, with limited tools, to live in the forest the way humanity’s ancestors once did. But for modern man, the environment is no longer intuitive, and people lack the skills needed to return to a life in nature. This makes the wilderness an incredibly deadly place because The Value of Inherited and Invented Knowledge is largely lost on modern humanity. “It often seems that everything in the wilderness is conspiring to harm you in one way or the other,” Paulsen says of the wild, concluding that only through knowledge can one increase his odds of survival (Guts: 64). While most creatures on the planet instinctively know how to find food, find or build shelters, and endure the change of seasons, humans have lost this ability. Humans now exist outside of nature, and no longer forage or hunt for food, build shelters by hand or face off against the weather. The final chapter of Guts examines not only how to cook in the wild (sharing the knowledge that is vital to survival), but also why it has intrinsic value, and what is lost by living in a society built on convenience. In Hatchet, when Brian finally catches a fish, he “felt his throat tighten, swell, and fill with pride at what he had done (Hatchet: 125). Likewise, when Paulsen hunts in the woods throughout his lifetime, he experiences the same sensation that washed over him on his first hunt: “Everything is new and out ahead of me and only good things can come” (Guts: 83). This delicate combination of sensations— of pride, accomplishment, and harmony with nature—is lacking in a society where everything is easy and humans have become unmoored from their ancestors.

Guts is unlike many memoirs in that it attempts to answer a very specific question about the author’s life for an equally specific audience. It is both an expansion of the Hatchet series, and a standalone memoir about a survivalist’s exploits. The book was inspired by the many questions sent by fans asking how Paulsen’s lived experiences informed his fiction. Guts is Paulsen’s response to these letters; it is a labor of love for his readers that acts as a physical manifestation of the power of knowledge and storytelling passed from generation to generation.