Brians Winter Analysis Essay

The book Brians Winter was written by Gary Paulsen; the author of the award winning book Hatchet. The health issue incorporated into the book is survival. The author most emphasizes physical health. He does this by explaining the obstacles and things that have happened to the character. The authors second most emphasis is the mental health because living in wilderness and getting his own food, the character has to think differently.

The main characters name is Brian Robeson. He gets stranded in the wilderness and has to overcome many obstacles dealing with his health, especially physical health. Since he is stranded with no food he must find his own which is very difficult and he copes with this by working harder than he ever has. His mental and intellectual health is also affected because he now has no contact with anything but the wilderness and needs to change his mindset on how to find food and how to survive. The last main health dimension is social health, which is affected greatly because he is alone and has no contact with any other humans. He does not like the way his health is deteriorating by the lack of food and exposure to the elements. He is frightened and is physically weakened. On page 6, during a dream he mentally moved away from the woods, he started to think in terms of the city again.

His social health was affected because he now had no one else to communicate with and was starting to get lonely. He also missed his family and friends very much. The cold weather and the lack of food also affected his physical health, he is suffering from starvation and malnutrition and he was then forced to change his mindset so that he could find food and survive. The health issue of survival changed his health in several ways including his ability to talk to people normally and efficiently when he was rescued for example people would be talking to him and he would just be staring out ignoring them. His emotional health was altered because of the loneliness so he began to become depressed. He had lost a lot of weight because of the lack of food, however due to the experience he started to reason differently and notice more details in the world around him. His spiritual health was affected because he hated to kill the animals he had to eat to survive and therefore he valued life more and recognized that everything had a soul.

When David Smallhorn rescued him it was evident that the time spent in the wilderness had a profound affect on Brians social abilities. He was rather awkward when talking to David, this was apparently due to the months spend in solitude in the wild. Davids reaction to Brian was probably a bit uncomfortable and out of the normal way that he would interact with another person because of Brians recent experience. However their meeting was so brief I dont think Davids mental health was affected very much. On page 130, David said, I smelled your smoke from your fire three weeks ago and thought it was another trapper. Brian wasnt sure how to react because that meant that he could have been saved weeks before. This created a bit of awkwardness between them.

My favorite part of the book was when Brian was able to kill the moose for food. I liked this part because he overcame a great obstacle and supplied himself with food, which was a necessity. I also liked it because there was action and it was very exciting.

The author accurately portrays the issue of survival because he includes most of the things that would probably happen to someone if they were stranded in the wilderness. Including lack of food and the change in motivation in order to survive. Also the author portrays his social health somewhat realistically because Brian was only in the wilderness for about three months. The temporary loss of social abilities is not completely realistic.