With each obstacle that he overcomes, he crosses the line from boyhood to manhood. At the close of the novel, Brian find it difficult to leave the wilderness and return to a world that will regard him as a mere boy. The reader gets the impression that Brian will miss the daily challenges that the wilderness provides. The major theme of this novel was survival. As Brian struggles for his survival through the Canadian winter, we see a young boy become a young man.
Survival is a recurrent theme in the lives of many young people today.
Many of today's young people are forced to survive on their own, be it because they don't have parental support, or they have made mistakes that have caused them to cut their childhood short, or any other of the countless circumstances. Father and Son relationship Brann has just started his first day of summer and his parents are fighting about the old farmhouse that Brann's father's brother, Andrew, has left him. Brann has never been truly proud of his father because he always gives in to his mother on every fight except when it came to naming Brann. To get away, Brann goes downstairs in the cellar and begins to play with his building blocks, which have been passed down by his father. After Brann falls asleep in the block castle, he wakes up to find that he has gone back into time.