About Mid Life Crisis in Horst Stern's "The Last Hunt"

Essay by Anonymous UserUniversity, Bachelor'sB-, October 1996

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In Horst Stern'sThe Last Hunt, a man named Joop is portrayed as a professional worker in a very well known bank. Outside of being a banker, Joop enjoys to hunt wild animals. This has been a hobby of his since he was a young boy. Throughout the story many questions are raised about Joop's true feelings about his job, hunting, and his life. In the beginning of the story, a women walks in on Joop while he is staring at a picture on a wall in his office. The women is very embarrassed because she believes he is staring at the nudity part of the picture. This indeed is not true as the reader further examines the reason behind the picture. By looking at the picture, Joop realizes that he is going through a mid-life crises, which can only be resolved by exorcising memories of his wife, the bear, and the goddess of hunting, Diana.

The solution to the first part of his mid-life crisis is to get rid of the memories of Mari that still resided deep within his mind. He does this by visiting the house where the majority of these memories take place. While touring through the house he remembers all the ways that Mari resembled the goddess of Diana. During the period that Joop was married to Mari, she portrayed herself in a few ways as being Diana. She did this by giving the name of 'Worshipping Diana to the act of Joop kissing her.

Her skin was white except for one violet-colored bruise just under her right collarbone; it never disappeared entirely during the hunting season and came from the kick of her hefty weapons. It pleased her that he liked to kiss this particular spot. She called it 'Worshipping Diana' (Stern 112).