Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Fear and Trembling, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Belief vs. Doubt
Faith and the Absurd
Infinite Resignation
The Unintelligibility of Faith
Summary
Analysis
Johannes reminisces about a time when the spice market in Holland slowed down so much that merchants dumped some of the cargo into the sea to increase the price. Johannes asks if there’s something similar happening regarding the spiritual in the modern age—has society really reached such heights that it must doubt that it’s really come very far at all just to have something to talk about? Each generation starts anew in learning about the truly human element of temporal life. Johannes identifies this element as passion, which is why no generation learns from the previous how to love. Faith, however, is the highest passion and each generation is tasked with learning how to have it. No generation can get tired with this because it’s the highest it can strive toward and it takes a lifetime.
Johannes likens the modern age’s insistence on embracing doubt to merchants purposely dumping spices into the sea to increase prices of the stock they kept. By this logic, the popularity of doubt makes faith itself that much more valuable; furthermore, these same people calling for doubt might be doing it on purpose, although Johannes doesn’t explain how or why. Although the current generation embraces doubt, the next generation might act differently because they will start over for themselves and eventually decide for themselves. Johannes, then, sees hope for faith in the future.
Themes
Faith is the highest passion a person can have, but many people may not get that far; it’s doubtful that anyone can go further. Johannes leaves it to his audience to determine whether many people in the current generation get as far as faith; he admits that he, at least, has a long way to go. Even if a person doesn’t have faith, there are enough things to do in life that their life won’t be wasted if they learn to love it. Furthermore, arriving at faith doesn’t mean coming to a standstill in life—a person can have a full life in faith, just as they can in love.
Johannes began this book by mourning the fact that people want to go further than faith, but now he bluntly states that he doesn’t really think anybody can. This means that modern people who try to go further are deluding themselves and others. Johannes also dispels the belief that once a person has faith, they no longer really move forward because they are stopping at faith. However, because even the most faithful person still exists in the universal, they are still able to move forward in other areas of their lives. The difference faith makes is that people who have it aren’t afraid of the future, but hopeful and optimistic.
Themes
