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 urges his friends to flee into solitude. The market-place, he says, is filled with uproar and poison—the world doesn’t revolve around those who display their supposed greatness in the market-place. Rather, it revolves around the “inventor of new values.” Those in the market-place are merely actors, and they only create belief in themselves.
Zarathustra tells his followers to avoid those who try to make a name for themselves. These people are not true originators of ideas—they are only interested in their own fame. The strong prefer solitude.
Themes
The lover of truth should not fear such people, no matter how much they pressure the truth-lover for a “yes” or a “no.” Truly great things—the invention of new values—happen far away from the market-place. It’s not worth lifting one’s arm to swat at those who buzz in the market-place, who have narrow souls, because these people feel their smallness and will always hate those who are greater.
The people in the market-place will try to fit the lovers of truth into their own mold. The lover of truth should resist this pressure and not even be troubled by such people; his business is outside the market-place, and lesser people will always see such a person as a threat.
Themes
