to three winterized cabins full of supplies : the mere proximity of these human constructions would have ruined what he believed to be his experience of total loneliness , and he would have acted accordingly by attempting to destroy them .
Krakauer does show some critical perspective vis-à-vis his hero , however , he tempers it immediately , as shown by the following passage , which relates McCandless ’ killing of a moose :
Then , on June 9 , he bagged the biggest prize of all : “ MOOSE !” he recorded in the journal . Overjoyed , the proud hunter took a photograph of himself kneeling over his trophy , rifle thrust triumphantly overhead , his features distorted in a rictus of ecstasy and amazement , like some unemployed genitor who ’ d gone to Reno and won a million-dollar jackpot .
Although McCandless was enough of a realist to know that hunting game was an unavoidable component of living of the land , he had always been ambivalent about killing animals . This ambivalence turned to remorse soon after he shot the moose . ( 114 )
The manner in which Krakauer presents this self-portrait suggests that it is a fairly exceptional occasion , however , it is preceded by several others that show McCandless smiling broadly next to a dead animal , which makes his alleged “ ambivalence about killing animals ” quite difficult to support . By the carcasses he exhibits in two of these portraits , we can deduce that they precede his killing of the moose , for they show porcupines and according to his log , McCandless never hunted porcupines after his killing of the moose . One of these self-portraits shows him holding the head of a dead porcupine with one hand and raising his thumb , while the other shows him posing between two dead porcupines on racks , his hands raised in the attitude of a magician having concluded a good trick . McCandless ’ expressions in these two pictures are much more caricature-like than on the self-portrait to which Krakauer refers and do not seem to indicate any type of ambivalence about killing animals , quite to the contrary : they correspond perfectly to the cliché pose of proud safari hunters , and McCandless flaunts on these a “ rictus of ecstasy ” much wilder than the one he shows in the moose pictures . As to the “ remorse ” surrounding the killing of the moose , it is mainly due to McCandless ’ inability to preserve the meat which fell prey to flies and maggots within a few days . Krakauer treats this episode as a momentary set-back , soon overcome by the powerful and deep consciousness of McCandless who recovers his “ contentment .”
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