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 tells his followers that once they gazed upon the seas and spoke of “God,” but he has now taught them to say “Superman.” God is something that the human will creates; likewise, the Superman is a creation. If Zarathustra’s disciples don’t create the Superman themselves, then they can at least be the ancestors of the Superman. This hope makes life endurable; the irrational can be no comfort.
In this chapter, Zarathustra expands upon the idea that “God is dead” and that the Superman replaces belief in God. Humanity once looked at the world as something divinely created; but now, with the loss of religion in the modern world, they realize that it’s all up to them. Ultimately, belief in the supernatural cannot be a comfort to one who desires the Superman.
Themes
Zarathustra says that teaching about an unmoved, self-sufficient God leads only to spiritual sickness. Creators must be their own mothers, which is painful and heartbreaking—but such creative will is truly liberating. A person’s will is what led them away from God, because if gods existed, then what would there be to create? Rather, a person’s will drives them to humankind, to the beauty of the Superman. Compared to this, the gods are nothing.
Zarathustra argues that belief in God isn’t actually comforting in the long run, and that being a “creator”—one who exercises the will to power—is truly liberating, even though it’s very difficult and not for everyone. Giving up belief in God was actually a hopeful step because, if God is the creator, then there’s no room for the creation of the Superman—for human beings to exercise their creative will.
Themes
