Hatchet

by Gary Paulsen
Hatchet is the story of a boy named Brian. On a trip to the Canadian oilfields to spend the
summer with his dad, the pilot of the Cessna he is traveling in suffers a heart attack and
dies. Brian must land the plane in the forest. Brian learns to exist in in this wilderness. He
faces many dangers including hunger, animal attacks, and even a tornado. This book gives
the reader a better understanding of what it is like to survive in an untamed land.
I began placing my lesson and unit plans on our school website in the mid 1990s. Through
the years I have received hundreds of e-mails from those who have used various parts of
my lessons. I am aware that some teachers use units each year and have come to rely on
the material being on the web.
Now years later with retirement right around the corner I will no longer have access to the
school website. I questioned, What would become of the endless hours of work? Will a
new webmaster delete all the old and begin with new? After battling over what I should
do, the answer came when I learned of the Teachers Pay Teachers website. With this new
home for my lessons, I can continue to update, correct, and add to the lessons I have
created.
I am working night and day to move the materials over to the new site. Many units are
already in place. If you cant find materials that you need, please send me an e-mail and I
will place your request on the top of my To Do List.
Thank you,
Gay Miller
[email protected]

You will find the units here:
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Gay
-Miller



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Current Editors
Steven Bickmore [email protected]
Jacqueline Bach [email protected]
Melanie Hundley [email protected]
Volume 22, Number 3
Spring 1995


DLA Ejournal Home | ALAN Home | Table of Contents for this issue | Search ALAN and other
ejournals

Signs in Speare's The Sign of the Beaver
Ann Mosley
The Sign of the Beaver is a masterful title for Elizabeth George Speare's historical frontier novel
about the developing relationship between young Matt Hallowell and an Indian youth named
Attean. In the novel, the words sign or signs come to symbolize the different communication
systems of the two boys, and these communication systems, in turn, reveal the boys' contrasting
cultural values.
Many years ago Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure recognized the importance of signs to
communication. He believed that
since language was a system of signs linguistics ought to be part of a larger science of signs, "a science which
would study the life of signs within society.... We call it semiology from the Green semeion (`sign'). It would
teach us what signs consist of, what laws govern them." (Culler, p.22)
Semiology, or semiotics as it is now called, has since been developed byJonathan Culler, Roland
Barthes, Umberto Eco and others to a level way beyond my ken or desire to learn, but these
scholars still return to Saussure's basic principles of langue and parole. Saussure viewed langue
as"the total language-system each speaker carries with him totally present at every moment" and
parole as "the individual speech act, temporally successive, largely constrained by the langue but
ultimately modifying it" (Holtz, p. 276). Thus, langue is the system of signs itself while parole
is the individual expression of the system.
The importance of signs as expressed in Matt's langue, especially in his written language system,
is shown early in the book. Soon after twelve-year-old Matt has been left to guard his family's
new cabin in the Maine woods while his father returns home to bring the rest of the family, he
encounters various difficulties. These problems include a dishonest visitor named Ben, who
steals his rifle; a marauding bear, who scatters his flour and eats his molasses; and a swarm of
bees, whose poison might have killed him if he had not been befriended by Attean and his
grandfather Saknis. In return for the Indians' kindness, Matt offers them the only thing he has to
offer -- his worn copy ofRobinson Crusoe. Almost immediately, Matt regrets his gift, for he
realizes that the Indians cannot read. However, Saknis realizes that the book holds a kind of
power, for it contains the signs -- the written words --that have stolen his people's land. Eagerly,
he proposes that Matt teach his grandson the "signs" in the book:
"Attean learn," he said. "White man come more and more to Indian land. Whiteman not make treaty with
pipe. White man make signs on paper, signs Indian not know. Indian put mark on paper to show him friend
of white man. Then white man take land. Tell Indian cannot hunt on land. Attean learn to read white man's
signs. Attean not give away hunting grounds." (p. 31)
Saknis realizes that his people have been cheated because they have not understood the language
system, the langue, of the white men who have made treaties with them.
Saussure's definition of a sign within a language system is also helpful here, for he recognized
that each sign was "made up of a `signifier' (a sound-image, or its graphic equivalent), and a
`signified' (the concept or meaning)"(Eagleton, p. 96). Certainly, Saknis understands and
expresses, if imperfectly, the oral language system of white society; but he does not understand
the"graphic equivalents" and does not bring to the signs the same set of cultural values.
Therefore, his interpretation of the "signified," or the meaning, has been different to that of the
white men with whom he has signed treaties.
As Matt begins to teach Attean his written language, the importance oflangue, or a system,
becomes more apparent. He recalls that he had learned his own alphabet in the religious context
of "A" standing for "In Adam's fall/We sinned all" (p. 32). Shrewdly, he decides to use less
ethnocentric references for the letters, such as arm for "A" andbone for "B"; but significantly
enough, these isolated fragments of the language system mean nothing to Attean. It is only after
Matt begins to read him Robinson Crusoe, which shows the language system in action, that
Attean becomes interested enough to begin to learn.
William Holtz's connection of langue to culture and of parole to"concrete experience" (p. 277)
clearly applies to Matt's reading of Robinson Crusoe to Attean. At first, Matt accepts without
question the cultural bias against "savages" expressed in the language system of the book. For
example, he reads the following passage about Crusoe's first meeting with his man Friday to
Attean without a thought to its being offensive:
The poor savage who fled, but had stopped, ... was so frightened with the noise and fire of my piece, that he
stood stock-still, and neither came forward nor went backward.... I beckoned to him again to come to me...
and he came nearer and nearer, kneeling down every ten or twelve steps, in token of acknowledgement for
saving his life.... At length he came close to me, and then he kneeled down again, kissed the ground, and,
taking my foot, set it upon his head. This, it seemed, was a token of swearing to be my slave forever.... (pp.42-
43)
Attean responds to this passage angrily: " `Never kneel down to white man!' ... `Not kneel down,'
Attean repeated fiercely. `Not be slave. Better die'" (p. 43). As a result of Attean's reaction, Matt
is left with new thoughts and new questions, for, "Like Robinson Crusoe, he has thought it
natural and right that the wild man should be the white man's slave" (p. 44).
Thus, this "concrete experience" with his language and its cultural bias causes Matt to look at
Attean differently, and the next time he reads Robinson Crusoe to his Indian friend, he begins to
take freedoms with the book-- skipping over the parts where Friday calls Crusoe "master," for
example. Thus, as Saussaur has observed, although the "system [is] determined ... the individual
is free...." This view of language
... grasps social pressures and determinants not so much as forces active in our actual speaking, but as a
monolithic structure which somehow stands over against us. It presumes that parole, individual utterance,
reallyis individual, rather than an inevitably social and "dialogic" affair which catches us up with other
speakers and listeners in a whole field of social values and purposes. (p. 114)
When he decides to alter the written signs in Robinson Crusoe, Matt has allowed his parole to
alter the langue he is using. That is, he has learned to place his own personal experience and
friendship above preconceived cultural biases. He now sees Attean as an individual and views
his culture through the lens of humanity rather than through that of a specific cultural system.
But Matt's language is not the only communication system described in The Sign of the Beaver.
Whereas Speare emphasizes Matt's written language, she emphasizes Attean's oral language.
Matt reads the story of Robinson Crusoe to Attean; Attean, in turn, tells this and other stories to
the people of his village. In fact, this quality of oral storytelling is essential to the Indians'
culture. The contrasting methods of expression --written for Matt and oral for Attean -- also
reveal basic cultural contrasts. The Indian culture is based on the group, or the tribe, and,
therefore, requires audience reaction and participation. Reading and writing, on the other hand,
are basically solitary pursuits, practices that, according to Marshall McLuhan, separate and
fragment individuals from one another -- as indeed an unrevised reading of Robinson Crusoe
would have separated Matt and Attean. As McLuhan has further observed, "The patterns of the
senses that are extended in the various languages of men are as varied as styles of dress and art.
Each mother tongue teaches its users a way of seeing and feeling the world, and of acting in the
world, that is quite unique" (p. 83).
Indeed, as representatives of their cultures, Matt and Attean do see and feel the world quite
differently. For example, Matt and his father have "bought" the land where they have built their
cabin. However, Attean does not understand the concept of ownership of land because his culture
views the land itself as a separate entity like the sky or the sea:
"How one man own ground?" Attean questioned.
"Well, my father owns it now. He bought it."
"I not understand." Attean scowled. "How can man own land? Land same as air. Land for all
people to live on. For beaver and deer. Does deer own land?" (p.117)
Another reason that Attean doesn't understand the white concept of landownership is that his
entire village functions as a true community so that individual ownership of property is
unnecessary and undesirable.
The Indians respect not only the land itself but also all of nature. Significantly, then, their signs
are natural ones. For example, when Saknis first introduces himself to Matt, he identifies himself
as one of the"family of beaver" (p. 26). And later when the boys visit a beaver dam, Attean
explains to Matt about his family's signs:
He pointed to a tree nearby. "Sign of beaver," he said. "Belong to family."
Carved on the bark Matt could make out the crude figure of an animal that could, with some
imagination, be a beaver.
"Sign show beaver house belong to people of beaver," Attean explained. "By and by, when
young beaver all grown, people of beaver hunt here. No one hunt but people of beaver."
"You mean, just from that mark on the tree, another hunter would not shoot here?"
"That our way," Attean said gravely. "All Indian understand." (pp. 55-56)
But, Matt wonders, "Would a white man understand?" (p. 56).
Then, almost immediately, Matt realizes that renegades such as Ben, the white man who had
stolen his rifle, would never understand and respect the Indian signs. One reason for this lack of
understanding, perhaps, is that the Indians and white men use totally different types of signs.
That is, the Indians use a crude picture of a beaver, an "iconic" sign, which C. S. Peirce, the
American founder of semiotics, defines as one that "somehow resembled what it stood for(a
photograph of a person, for example)"; in contrast, the white man's written language uses a
"symbolic" sign, which is "only arbitrarily or conventionally linked with its referent" (Eagleton,
p. 101).
Returning home from the beaver dam, Attean shows Matt more Indian signs --"secret signs" of a
dislodged stone or a broken stick that he has made to show the way through the forest. Matt
recalls his father's way of making "blazes on the trees with his knife," but Attean explains, "`That
white man's way. Indian maybe not want to show where he go. Not want hunters to find beaver
house" (p.57). Semiotically speaking, these different sign methods of marking one's way though
the forest make us
think of our social and cultural world as a series of sign systems, comparable with language. What we live
among and relate to are not physical objects and events; they are objects and events with meaning: ... not just
physical gestures but acts of courtesy or hostility. (p. 25)
As Matt and Attean get to know one another and become friends, they learn more about each
other's sign systems. Matt knows that "he ought to feel grateful for Attean's teaching," for each
day
Attean taught him some new thing -- a plant like an onion that he could drop into his cooking pot to make his
stew more tasty -- a weed with a small orange flower and a milky juice in its stem that took away the sting of
insect bites or poison ivy -- a plant with brownish flowers and roots bearing a string of nutlike bulbs that
thickened his stew and made it more nourishing. (p. 66)
And Matt observes that
in spite of himself Attean had learned something from the white boy. He was speaking the English tongue
with greater ease.... In return, Matt liked to tryout Indian words.... He didn't think he could ever quite get
them right, but he could see that though it amused Attean when he tried, it also pleased him. (p.67)
Thus, Matt and Attean have each learned more about the other's langue-- about the language or
sign system with which each society communicates. And in so doing, each boy has also learned
to understand and respect the culture of the other. At the beginning of the book, Matt had viewed
Attean as well as the"man Friday" in Robinson Crusoe as "savages." Later, after he observes
Attean's self-sufficiency, knowledge, and skill in the forest, Matt sees himself as a "puny sort of
Robinson Crusoe" (p. 57). Finally, however, Matt grows beyond the confines of his own written
language as symbolized byRobinson Crusoe. At the end of Defoe's book, Crusoe leaves Friday
behind with hardly a thought for his welfare. In contrast, when Attean and his tribe leave in The
Sign of the Beaver, Attean and Matt make symbolic gifts of friendship. Attean gives his dog to
Matt; in response, Matt rejects his original gift to Attean, the culturally biased Robinson Crusoe,
in favor of a family heirloom -- his father's watch. Each of these gifts represents the culture of its
original owner, but even more importantly, each gift is a sign of friendship. Matt has truly come
to understand and respect "the sign of the beaver."
Works Cited
Culler, Jonathan. The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction. Cornell, 1981.
Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, illustrated by Roger Duvoisin.
World, 1946.
Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. University of Minnesota Press, 1983.
Holtz, William. "Spatial Form in Modern Literature: A Reconsideration."Critical Inquiry 4
(1977): pp. 271-283.
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. NAL,1964.
Speare, Elizabeth George. The Sign of the Beaver. Dell Yearling,1983.

Ann Mosley is a professor of literature and languages at East Texas State University and a
former reviewer for The ALAN Review. She delivered this paper at the Children's Literature
Section of the South Central MLA meeting.

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Last modified: 06/02/11 14:51:01 by Radiya Rashid