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
Years pass; Zarathustra’s hair turns white. One day he’s sitting outside his cave overlooking the sea. His animals come before him and ask him if he is looking for his happiness. Zarathustra replies that happiness doesn’t mean anything to him—only his work does. He is ripening, and there is honey in his veins that thickens his blood and quiets his soul. Zarathustra climbs a mountain and sends his animals back home. He claimed that he was going to offer a honey-offering, but this was simply a ruse so that he could get away alone.
Part Four of the novel begins here; it was written about a year after Nietzsche finished the book’s first three parts. Zarathustra is preparing his soul in solitude for his final descent to humanity.
Themes
Zarathustra declares that he will go “fishing” in the world, using his happiness as a net to draw people up to his level and beg them to “Become what you are!” He is still waiting for the signs that it’s time for him to descend to them. He doesn’t know how far off his thousand-year “empire of man” will be, but that makes him no less certain of its coming.
Zarathustra’s plea to “Become what you are” is a summons to the “highest” individuals to attain their full potential. The “empire of man” refers to the development of such a higher race of humanity, the Superman, which Nietzsche himself believed was coming.
Themes
