Peter Wessel Zapffe: the Ontological Tragedy of Human Being

The hermeneutics of Peter Wessel Zapffe's tale The Last Messiah depicts the difficult condition of human life, which finds itself living as an unwelcome guest in the world. Nature has armed the human being with a sharp sword without a hilt: consciousness. This has allowed humans to survive in the environment but is also a weapon that turns against the human species itself. Self-awareness and awareness of the world do not satisfy the metaphysical interest that humans harbor, on the contrary, it completely empties it, thus annihilating the existence of human beings as well. Through the narrative of a hunting scene and an encounter between the hunter and non-human animals, Zapffe manages to describe, in a few pages, the nature of our species, the reasons for its suffering, its defense mechanisms, and the only possible hope for salvation