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Summary
Themes
and Colors
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. At the age of 30, Zarathustra leaves his home and retreats into the mountains. For 10 years, he enjoys living in solitude—but one morning at dawn, he addresses the sun, praising it for giving light to him and his animals. Like the sun, Zarathustra wants to give something away: his wisdom. To do this, he must descend to humankind.
Zarathustra, a prophet and seer, enters and then emerges from his solitude, wanting to share the wisdom he’s accumulated. The German verb used to describe his emergence, untergeben, has several meanings—to descend, to set (like the sun), and to be destroyed. There are many plays on this word throughout the book. Its use here suggests that perhaps Zarathustra must sacrifice or destroy a part of himself to emerge from solitude and share his wisdom with others.
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2. Zarathustra ventures down the mountain alone. In the forest, he meets an old saint who recognizes Zarathustra, though Zarathustra looks different—more childlike and awake—than he used to. The saint asks Zarathustra why he wants to be among people again, and Zarathustra explains that he wants to give humanity a gift. The saint tries to discourage Zarathustra from leaving his solitude, explaining that he himself praises God when he’s alone in the forest. After Zarathustra and the saint part ways, Zarathustra marvels that the old hermit doesn’t yet know that “God is dead.”
This is the first appearance in the novel of Nietzsche’s famous phrase “God is dead.” By this, Zarathustra may mean that the Christian God has literally ceased to exist—or perhaps that the modern era’s emphasis on science and rationality has rendered the idea of God irrelevant. Either way, as the role of God has diminished in modern society, most people are no longer limited to living according to religious orthodoxies. The old saint, meanwhile, symbolizes those who continue to hold onto religious beliefs. The novel implies that religious doctrine, unlike Zarathustra’s wisdom, is no longer relevant to the mass of humanity; its usefulness is limited to forest hermits.
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3. Zarathustra arrives in a town, where people are waiting for a tight-rope walker’s performance in the market square. Zarathustra addresses the people, saying, “I teach you the Superman. Man is something that should be overcome.” Compared to the Superman, he says, man is an embarrassment, like an ape compared to men.
The Superman is and shall be the meaning of the world. Zarathustra urges people to believe this, instead of believing in “superterrestrial hopes” taught to them by those who despise life. Once, the soul despised the body—but now, the soul is as starving, just as the body once was.
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Zarathustra says that the greatest thing a person can experience is “contempt.” A person feels this contempt when they realize that their happiness, reason, and virtue are not what they should be. They also realize that it’s not sin but moderation in sinning that offends heaven. Zarathustra says that the Superman is the cleansing lightning that such a person needs. But the people, eager to watch the tight-rope walker, just laugh at Zarathustra.
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4. Zarathustra marvels at the people and then continues. He explains that “man is a rope, fastened between animal and Superman,” and that this rope stretches across a dangerous abyss. Zarathustra loves the one who cannot help but venture across to the other bank, who sacrifices himself for the sake of the Superman someday coming to Earth. He loves those with full souls and free hearts, who “prophesy the coming of the lightning.” Zarathustra is a prophet of that lightning, which is called Superman.
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5. Zarathustra falls silent, knowing that the people don’t understand—they’re are proud of their culture, so they’re resistant to his words about contempt. For that reason, he tells them about the “Ultimate Man,” who’s the most contemptible. Ultimate Men believe that they’ve discovered happiness, and they all want the same thing. They think they know everything, and they are content with small pleasures.
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Zarathustra’s first discourse comes to an end. The crowd just laughs and mocks him, saying that they’d prefer the Ultimate Man—he can keep the Superman. Saddened, Zarathustra wonders if he has lived in solitude for too long.
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6. Just then, as the tight-rope walker reaches the middle of his rope, a brightly dressed buffoon bursts out the door and pursues him across the rope, calling mockingly to him. Then, the buffoon springs over the walker with a cry. Shocked, the tight-rope walker loses his balance and falls to the ground. Zarathustra kneels beside the shattered figure, who isn’t quite dead. He tells the tight-rope walker that he will bury him with his own hands, to honor him for voluntarily facing danger.
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7. By evening, the crowd disperses. Zarathustra sits thinking beside the man (now dead) for a long time. He didn’t catch anyone today, he reflects, except for a corpse. He thinks that human existence is mysterious, susceptible even to a buffoon. He still wants to teach people about the Superman, but he can’t seem to reach them.
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8. As Zarathustra picks up the corpse and sets off, the buffoon catches up to him and warns him to flee. According to him, the “good and just” and the “faithful of the true faith” hate Zarathustra, calling him a danger. Zarathustra proceeds out of town, wandering through the woods with the corpse until he is hungry. He knocks on the door of a lonely house, and an old man gives him bread and wine. Zarathustra journeys on for a while before reaching a hollow tree, which he tucks the corpse protectively inside. Then, Zarathustra goes to sleep.
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9. Zarathustra sleeps for a long time. The following day, he wakes suddenly, rejoicing over a new truth: he has realized that he needs not dead companions, but living ones who want to follow the same path he does. Zarathustra will speak to these companions instead of to the crowds. His purpose is to “lure many away from the herd.”
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Zarathustra knows that the “herdsmen” will call him a robber. The herdsmen are the “good and the just” and the “faithful of the true faith.” These people hate the one who destroys “tables of values,” not understanding that he is the creator. The creator looks for “fellow-creators” who write “new values on new tables.” Zarathustra now knows that he isn’t meant to be a herdsman or a gravedigger, or to speak to the people. Instead, he will join other creators and teach them the Superman.
10. Zarathustra has this realization at noon. Above, an eagle circles, with a serpent coiled around its neck—these are Zarathustra’s animals (the proudest and wisest, respectively). Zarathustra wishes that he were wise like the serpent and that his pride, like the eagle, would always fly along with his wisdom. This is how Zarathustra’s “down-going” begins.
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