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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Rethinking Morality
The Superman and the Will to Power
Death of God and Christianity
Eternal Recurrence
Summary
Analysis
1. At the age of 30, Zarathustra leaves his home and retreats into the mountains. For 10 years, he enjoys living in solitude—but one morning at dawn, he addresses the sun, praising it for giving light to him and his animals. Like the sun, Zarathustra wants to give something away: his wisdom. To do this, he must descend to humankind.
Zarathustra, a prophet and seer, enters and then emerges from his solitude, wanting to share the wisdom he’s accumulated. The German verb used to describe his emergence, untergeben, has several meanings—to descend, to set (like the sun), and to be destroyed. There are many plays on this word throughout the book. Its use here suggests that perhaps Zarathustra must sacrifice or destroy a part of himself to emerge from solitude and share his wisdom with others.
Themes
2. Zarathustra ventures down the mountain alone. In the forest, he meets an old saint who recognizes Zarathustra, though Zarathustra looks different—more childlike and awake—than he used to. The saint asks Zarathustra why he wants to be among people again, and Zarathustra explains that he wants to give humanity a gift. The saint tries to discourage Zarathustra from leaving his solitude, explaining that he himself praises God when he’s alone in the forest. After Zarathustra and the saint part ways, Zarathustra marvels that the old hermit doesn’t yet know that “God is dead.”
This is the first appearance in the novel of Nietzsche’s famous phrase “God is dead.” By this, Zarathustra may mean that the Christian God has literally ceased to exist—or perhaps that the modern era’s emphasis on science and rationality has rendered the idea of God irrelevant. Either way, as the role of God has diminished in modern society, most people are no longer limited to living according to religious orthodoxies. The old saint, meanwhile, symbolizes those who continue to hold onto religious beliefs. The novel implies that religious doctrine, unlike Zarathustra’s wisdom, is no longer relevant to the mass of humanity; its usefulness is limited to forest hermits.
Themes
3. Zarathustra arrives in a town, where people are waiting for a tight-rope walker’s performance in the market square. Zarathustra addresses the people, saying, “I teach you the Superman. Man is something that should be overcome.” Compared to the Superman, he says, man is an embarrassment, like an ape compared to men.
Zarathustra proclaims his central teaching, the Superman, to the people. The Superman is an evolved form of humanity, similar to how modern human beings are an evolved form of apes.
Themes
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The Superman is and shall be the meaning of the world. Zarathustra urges people to believe this, instead of believing in “superterrestrial hopes” taught to them by those who despise life. Once, the soul despised the body—but now, the soul is as starving, just as the body once was.
The Superman is intricately related to the fate of the whole world. Most people, however, believe in a heavenly afterlife and in the superiority of the soul to the body. Zarathustra implies that those who teach these beliefs despise life, and that the soul isn’t benefited by such beliefs any more than the body is.
Themes
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Zarathustra says that the greatest thing a person can experience is “contempt.” A person feels this contempt when they realize that their happiness, reason, and virtue are not what they should be. They also realize that it’s not sin but moderation in sinning that offends heaven. Zarathustra says that the Superman is the cleansing lightning that such a person needs. But the people, eager to watch the tight-rope walker, just laugh at Zarathustra.
By “contempt,” Zarathustra means something like the realization that one is not living with one’s whole heart and effort. He extends this idea further, and hints at his departure from conventional morality, when he describes half-hearted sin as more offensive than sin in itself. According to Zarathustra, humanity’s evolution to become Superman will liberate people from those things that garner contempt—but the people reject Zarathustra’s teaching. They don’t understand, and they aren’t interested anyway—they’d rather watch a spectacle.
Themes
4. Zarathustra marvels at the people and then continues. He explains that “man is a rope, fastened between animal and Superman,” and that this rope stretches across a dangerous abyss. Zarathustra loves the one who cannot help but venture across to the other bank, who sacrifices himself for the sake of the Superman someday coming to Earth. He loves those with full souls and free hearts, who “prophesy the coming of the lightning.” Zarathustra is a prophet of that lightning, which is called Superman.
Zarathustra likens humanity’s situation to the tightrope “between animal and Superman.” Venturing beyond humanity’s current situation to become the Superman is a risky, self-sacrificial endeavor, since doing so means casting off one’s current mental and spiritual substructures—that is, the very framework of a person’s existence—to make way for a morally superior version of humanity. In this way, the Superman sacrifices the present to the future for the sake of humanity’s progress.
Themes
5. Zarathustra falls silent, knowing that the people don’t understand—they’re are proud of their culture, so they’re resistant to his words about contempt. For that reason, he tells them about the “Ultimate Man,” who’s the most contemptible. Ultimate Men believe that they’ve discovered happiness, and they all want the same thing. They think they know everything, and they are content with small pleasures.
The “Ultimate Man” is the antithesis of the Superman because the Ultimate Man sacrifices the future to the present. In other words, the Ultimate Man represents the pinnacle of current culture and society, content with humanity’s current situation and (unlike the Superman) uninterested in changing it.
Themes
Zarathustra’s first discourse comes to an end. The crowd just laughs and mocks him, saying that they’d prefer the Ultimate Man—he can keep the Superman. Saddened, Zarathustra wonders if he has lived in solitude for too long.
Zarathustra’s prediction comes to pass: the idea of the Superman doesn’t appeal to self-satisfied humanity. They don’t want to sacrifice their comforts and certainties for the sake of humanity’s betterment.
Themes
6. Just then, as the tight-rope walker reaches the middle of his rope, a brightly dressed buffoon bursts out the door and pursues him across the rope, calling mockingly to him. Then, the buffoon springs over the walker with a cry. Shocked, the tight-rope walker loses his balance and falls to the ground. Zarathustra kneels beside the shattered figure, who isn’t quite dead. He tells the tight-rope walker that he will bury him with his own hands, to honor him for voluntarily facing danger.
The sudden interruption of the tight-rope walker’s performance symbolizes humanity’s journey toward the Superman. The buffoon symbolizes Zarathustra shocking humanity (the tight-rope walker) out of complacency about existence. The tight-rope walker’s plunge and death parallel Zarathustra’s words about the dangers involved in seeking the Superman—in this journey, one must be ready to sacrifice everything.
Themes
7. By evening, the crowd disperses. Zarathustra sits thinking beside the man (now dead) for a long time. He didn’t catch anyone today, he reflects, except for a corpse. He thinks that human existence is mysterious, susceptible even to a buffoon. He still wants to teach people about the Superman, but he can’t seem to reach them.
Though Zarathustra came down from the mountain in hopes of winning over humanity, nobody was receptive. A dead man is all he has to show for his efforts—a symbol of humanity’s weakness and how little apparent sense human life makes.
Themes
8. As Zarathustra picks up the corpse and sets off, the buffoon catches up to him and warns him to flee. According to him, the “good and just” and the “faithful of the true faith” hate Zarathustra, calling him a danger. Zarathustra proceeds out of town, wandering through the woods with the corpse until he is hungry. He knocks on the door of a lonely house, and an old man gives him bread and wine. Zarathustra journeys on for a while before reaching a hollow tree, which he tucks the corpse protectively inside. Then, Zarathustra goes to sleep.
By the “good and just” and the “faithful,” the buffoon refers to those who teach and adhere to conventional ideas. These people perceive Zarathustra as a danger to their ways and threaten him accordingly. The disapproval of the “good and just” will recur throughout the novel. The meal of bread and wine alludes to the Christian sacrament of Communion, though here, it gives Zarathustra strength in solitude, not in a religious community.
Themes
9. Zarathustra sleeps for a long time. The following day, he wakes suddenly, rejoicing over a new truth: he has realized that he needs not dead companions, but living ones who want to follow the same path he does. Zarathustra will speak to these companions instead of to the crowds. His purpose is to “lure many away from the herd.”
Given that the tight-rope walker’s fall and death symbolize Zarathustra shocking humanity out of complacency, the man’s corpse seems to symbolically parallel humanity’s “deadness” or unreceptiveness to Zarathustra’s teachings. Zarathustra realizes that, from now on, he should direct his message not to the masses, or “the herd”—whom he seems to view as dead weight on society, so to speak—but to individuals who are capable of hearing his message and rejecting convention.
Themes
Zarathustra knows that the “herdsmen” will call him a robber. The herdsmen are the “good and the just” and the “faithful of the true faith.” These people hate the one who destroys “tables of values,” not understanding that he is the creator. The creator looks for “fellow-creators” who write “new values on new tables.” Zarathustra now knows that he isn’t meant to be a herdsman or a gravedigger, or to speak to the people. Instead, he will join other creators and teach them the Superman.
By the “herdsmen,” Zarathustra again refers to the masses, the conventional, and those who reject him. “Tables of values” refers to sets of beliefs or value systems that Zarathustra questions. Others see his questioning as destructive, but Zarathustra sees destruction as a vital step toward creating something new. He will seek out others who see the world in the same way and will join his efforts.
Themes
10. Zarathustra has this realization at noon. Above, an eagle circles, with a serpent coiled around its neck—these are Zarathustra’s animals (the proudest and wisest, respectively). Zarathustra wishes that he were wise like the serpent and that his pride, like the eagle, would always fly along with his wisdom. This is how Zarathustra’s “down-going” begins.
In the novel, noon symbolizes the time when wisdom is ripe and ready to be bestowed. Zarathustra’s companion animals symbolize the characteristics needed—wisdom and pride—in order to carry out his prophetic work on humanity’s behalf.
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