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
(1) Zarathustra interrupts the litany and asks the Higher Men what they’re doing. The old pope says that it’s better to worship God in this form than in none; the scientist says that even a philosopher prefers to walk by crooked paths. The others offer various excuses for their behavior, and the ugliest man says that God is killed most effectively by laughter. (2) Zarathustra denounces the Higher Men’s childishness; they should not seek to enter the kingdom of heaven, but the kingdom of Earth.
In the Middle Ages, there was a type of festival called the asinaria festa, or feast of the ass, which celebrated Jesus’s childhood journey to Egypt on a donkey. Of the various justifications given by the Higher Men, the ugliest man’s excuse is nearest to Zarathustra’s view of the death of God. Nevertheless, otherworldly beliefs have no place in Zarathustra’s teachings.
Themes
3. However, Zarathustra is pleased that the men have regained joy. He says that only “convalescents” (those who are healing) devise such nonsense, and so they should remember this festival and celebrate it in remembrance of him.
