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
Zarathustra gives a hymn about the beauty of the sky, longing to disappear into its purity. He hates everything that obscures its clarity, things that neither “bless nor […] curse from the heart.” He longs for a declaration of “Yes! and Amen!” The one who can’t bless should learn to curse.
This section is an expression of Nietzsche’s optimistic view of life (“Yes! and Amen!”). Zarathustra rejects a halting, lukewarm attitude about life—someone who exercises the will to power does not settle for half-heartedness.
Themes
Zarathustra says that everything is “baptized […] beyond good and evil,” with good and evil themselves only being fleeting. There’s no “eternal will” that acts upon things—rather, everything is subject to chance.
Like the idea of good and evil as relative, chance plays an important role in Nietzsche’s philosophy. Chance doesn’t toy with humanity; rather, it is liberating, because it means that there’s no divine predeterminism of things.
Themes
