Hatchet

Brian suddenly awakens, screaming for his mother. He is overcome with abdominal pain. He has to crawl out of his shelter and suffers through vomiting and diarrhea for “over an hour” (63). He falls in and out of sleep, dreaming of his mother and the affair. In the morning he decides he made himself sick by eating too many “gut cherries” (65). He goes to the lake to wash himself and is disturbed to see his bloody, swollen reflection. Overcome with emotion, he sits on the bank crying for a long time. Afterward he returns to his shelter and notices that he already calls it home.

He tries eating the gut cherries again, in a moderate portion. He searches for different berries and finds sweet red raspberries. As he gorges on the delicious raspberries, he suddenly notices a bear watching him, interested in the same berry bush. He instinctively runs back to the shelter, but “after he had gone perhaps fifty yards his brain took over […] if the bear had wanted you, his brain said, he would have taken you” (70). Brian realizes the bear was nonthreatening. This gives him courage to return to the berry bush to eat more and fill his jacket with as many pounds as possible.