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
While Zarathustra is living on the Blissful Islands in the middle of the sea, a ship arrives, and sailors disembark to shoot rabbits. Toward noon, however, the sailors saw a man flying toward them through the air, calling, “It is high time!” They realize it is Zarathustra.
In this puzzling section, Zarathustra discusses revolution and anarchism and also tells a story about sailors and a flying prophet that his followers find much more interesting.
Themes
Five days later, Zarathustra reappears and tells his followers a story about his conversation with a “fire-dog.” Zarathustra told the fire-dog that the subversive stories it tells are actually false and superficial. These stories proclaim freedom, yet Zarathustra mistrusts them. The world does not revolve around these stories; rather, it revolves around “inventors of new values.”
Zarathustra’s conversation with the fire-dog is Nietzsche’s critique of revolution and anarchism. The fire-dog claims that its stories about political developments are the most important stories in the world. Zarathustra thinks the importance of such developments is an illusion and a distraction from a higher truth.
Themes
The state and church claim to be the most important beasts on Earth, Zarathustra continues, but this isn’t true. The fire-dog is cowed by this, and it retreats. But Zarathustra’s followers are more interested in the story about the sailors and Zarathustra’s flight. Zarathustra wonders for what it is “high time.”
Zarathustra concludes that society’s major institutions are not as important as they proclaim themselves to be—he implies that individuals, especially higher individuals, are much more important. Though Zarathustra does not answer his own question, he suggests that it is “high time” to proclaim the teaching of the Eternal Recurrence, which he will soon explain.
Themes
