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 says that many people die too late, and some die too early. He teaches that one should die at the “right time,” and that the “consummating” death should be triumphant and a spur to those still alive. Ultimately, Zarathustra’s kind of death is voluntary—one that comes because one wishes it. This is possible when a person has a goal and an heir: when they has these, they will stop desperately clinging to life.
For Zarathustra, exercising one’s will to power ideally extends even to one’s death. Death should serve one’s will to power, in other words: once a person has an “heir” to further one’s goal (implicitly the Superman), that person has exhausted their purposes in life. Their death can then be “consummating”—a fitting end to their life.
Themes
Zarathustra says that there are too many preachers of patience and slow death. The “Hebrew” honored by these preachers died too early, and this fact has since caused the death of many others. If he had remained in the desert instead of coming among the “good and just,” then perhaps he might have learned to laugh and to love the earth. He might have lived to recant his own teaching.
The “Hebrew” refers to Jesus Christ, and the “preachers of death” refer mainly to Christian clergy. Zarathustra says that if Christ hadn’t been persecuted by the self-righteous, then he might have lived longer and might not have preached death himself, thereby leading countless others to untimely deaths.
Themes
One who is mature enough to understand life and death is able to choose death at the right time. In such a man’s death, his spirit will be outwardly virtuous, causing others to love the earth more. This is what it means to have a goal and an heir.
When a person exercises their will to power, they’re able to both live and die in such a way that they leave a valuable legacy for others—one that betters humanity as a whole.
Themes
