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Of the Rabble
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 a parable of a tarantula, which symbolizes “preachers of equality.” Their “justice” is merely vengefulness in disguise. Tarantulas equate virtue with “will to equality,” and they protest everything that has power. This protest is really a tyrannical appetite, a repressed envy.
The “preachers of equality” are those who proclaim that all people are the same. Nietzsche rejected this, believing that the fight for equality was just an envious grasping by the powerless.
Themes
Zarathustra warns his followers to mistrust anyone who has a strong desire to punish, especially when they are the “good and just.” Even some of those who teach Zarathustra’s doctrine are actually “tarantulas” who preach equality, but Zarathustra does not want to be confused with them. To him, justice says that people are not equal. If it were otherwise, he would not love the Superman. The whole point of life is that it must “overcome itself again and again.” It therefore needs “conflict between steps and those who climb them.”
The “good and just,” or those who claim to be morally superior, will try to punish those who depart from the society’s traditional values. They will often do this on the basis of alleged inequalities in the world. However, Zarathustra plainly teaches that there’s no such thing as equality among people. If there were, it wouldn’t be necessary for humanity to overcome itself, and people wouldn’t admire or strive to embody the Superman ideal.
Themes
