Tracker

This final section of the novel shows John’s completed transformation and the culmination of a hunt that has become something more significant. John leaves his rifle behind which manifests a brand-new relationship both with nature and with The Meaning and Inevitability of Death. He never makes this direct connection, but metaphorically, John acts as the doe’s cancer—the thing that slowly tracks it with the endgame of killing. By leaving his rifle behind, John is no longer a vehicle of death for the deer, just as he wishes the cancer would no longer mean death for his grandfather. Prior to this, John starts to understand he won’t be able to kill the deer in Chapter 9. The taint of the venison sandwich shows John taking issue with killing an innocent creature to eat, even though John is only doing so to nourish himself. His decision to learn from the deer in Chapter 9 foreshadows the conclusions he comes to about death in Chapter 12—that it comes for everyone and that he can’t stop his grandfather from dying.

John starts to notice other parts of nature in Chapter 9, which symbolizes how John becomes more attuned to life and more accepting of The Unpredictability of Nature. The rabbit and wolf symbolize the layering complexities of nature, as well as the relationship between predator and prey. Like the wolf, John is a type of predator, but unlike the wolf, John can choose not to be, also symbolized by him leaving the rifle behind. John becomes a part of nature in Chapters 10 and 11. Rather than a human hunter participating in deer-hunting season, he is a creature following another creature with the goal of learning and cheating death, though this second goal may be brought on by delirium from hunger and grief.

Chapters 10 and 11 show how John and the doe become one entity. In Chapter 10, John only struggles to his feet when he notices the doe is nearby, showing how his life force and will are currently linked to her. When she gets up and moves, he is able to get up and move. In Chapter 11, John is ill when the doe is ill, showing a deeper connection. John succumbs to the same physical ailment, rather than let the doe suffer alone.

Chapters 10 and 11 also show how hope can become almost dreamlike when one is grieving. At the end of Chapter 10, John fervently believes that touching the doe will somehow allow death to be cheated. He reasons that leaving his rifle behind means that he cannot kill the doe and that letting her live is the opposite of killing her, therefore she will have survived against the odds of him hunting her, thus cheating death. No explanation is given for why John believes touching the doe will achieve this, and it may be that he makes up this connection in his confused state because he feels a closeness to the doe that he can’t explain but must act on in a substantial way. John and the doe collapsing in Chapter 11 is another mirror link between them, similar to the vomit, and it allows John to touch the doe, which is a life-changing moment for him.

After touching the doe, John passes out, waking to find no evidence she was there except for blood and urine on the snow where she’d been. While this offers proof something was there, it doesn’t offer definitive proof the doe herself was there, and it’s possible John hallucinated the entire tracking experience in his grief over his grandfather’s illness. Equating the doe’s death to his grandfather’s death may have caused John to disassociate himself from reality while he grappled with the idea of killing when he wanted so badly to stop death from coming. It’s possible that John only ever truly saw the doe in Chapter 3 and that his experiences in the forest were all in his mind, triggered by seeing a doe in an unusual way.

Regardless of whether John’s experiences are real or not, Chapter 12 shows that the “reality” of an experience matters less than the truth of what it means. Whether John hallucinated tracking the doe or not, he comes to terms with his grandfather’s death and death in general, understanding that death is just another stage of life, and demonstrating Individual Growth Through Life Experience. His grandfather reacts emotionally to John’s retelling of the experience because he is moved by John’s almost spiritual experience with nature, particularly as it illustrates John’s love for him. John’s dream at the end of the book symbolizes how the lessons from his encounter—whether real or not—will stay with him. John now equates the deer with his grandfather, and it may be that John will not be able to hunt anymore because he won’t be able to take a life, even for food. The details of John’s dream are not given, but he wakes afraid, suggesting that the doe, his grandfather, or both die in his dream.