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
As Zarathustra continues on his way, he comes upon an old man, a sorcerer, who is flinging himself around in a frenzied manner. When Zarathustra tries to help him, the old man seems oblivious. Finally, shaking, he begins to wail in verse, addressing a cruel “unknown God” who oppresses him and at last retreats from him.
The sorcerer symbolizes Nietzsche’s former friend, operatic composer Richard Wagner, with whom he’d had a falling-out. (The young Nietzsche had idealized Wagner from afar, and when they became friends, the reality of who Wagner was didn’t live up to Nietzsche’s imagination.) The sorcerer’s wailings are intended as a parody of Wagner’s poetic style.
Themes
Zarathustra, impatient, whacks the sorcerer with a stick and orders him to stop his complaints, accusing him of being false. The sorcerer complains that Zarathustra strikes hard with his “truth.” He says that his wailings were a portrayal of the spiritually repentant, a person who turns their spirit against themselves, tormented by his conscience. He was trying to deceive Zarathustra with mock distress. Zarathustra tells the sorcerer that there is nothing genuine about him, and the sorcerer admits that he is not a great man and can no longer pretend to be. But he is being honest now: he is seeking Zarathustra. Zarathustra allows the sorcerer to enter his cave.
Nietzsche disliked Wagner’s overdramatic personality, his vanity, and his perceived insincerity. Ultimately, though, Zarathustra lets the sorcerer into his cave with the rest, suggesting that the sorcerer has the makings of a higher man—even if it has not come to full expression in him.
Themes
