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
The herd says that solitude is criminal. It is difficult to rid oneself of the herd’s lingering voice; the way to oneself is a path of affliction. When one pursues freedom, it’s less important what they’re being freed from than what they’re being freed for. Freedom is possible when one can decide good and evil for oneself, following one’s own will as law. But being one’s own lawgiver and judge is dangerous—facing one’s solitude is a fearful thing, so one must be prepared to kill one’s emotions. One must also bear the envy and contempt of those one surpasses.
Solitude requires one to choose the contempt of the herd, because the masses see solitude as bizarre and threatening. Choosing solitude isn’t so much about freeing oneself from something as using one’s freedom to reach for something else—namely, exercising the will to power. The masses don’t understand this path, making it a difficult journey internally and a dangerous one externally, since others will surely misunderstand or judge the person who surpasses them.
Themes
Zarathustra advises that the solitary must be on guard against the “good and just,” who hate anyone who devises their own virtue. One must also resist one’s tendency to love and pity others. To become new and a “creator,” one must despise what one loves about oneself.
Zarathustra is essentially saying that one cannot expect affirmation from the rest of the world (particularly from the self-righteous guardians of virtue), and one cannot indulge in pity for others or oneself.
Themes
