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Retired from Service
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 keeps searching for the one who has been crying in distress. He enters a deathly kingdom without grass, trees, or birds—only an old, ugly serpent. The snake seems familiar to him. At last, Zarathustra sees a manlike figure sitting on the path and is so ashamed of its appearance that he turns to leave. However, the figure speaks, asking Zarathustra to solve the mystery of his identity. Briefly overcome by pity, Zarathustra tells this “ugliest man” that he is “the murderer of God.”
This chapter further illustrates some of Nietzsche’s ideas about atheism. The setting of the decayed garden, including a familiar snake, suggests an inversion of the biblical Garden of Eden. The man’s ugliness is puzzling, but it suggests that the one who proclaims that “God is dead” will appear to the masses to be the most despicable betrayer.
Themes
The ugliest man detains Zarathustra when he tries to leave. He says that Zarathustra is his last refuge; he is fleeing those who pity him. He should not be pitied, because he is “rich,” and the people do not understand this, lacking “reverence for great misfortune.” Zarathustra is the only one who rejects pity and is ashamed for the sufferer. The man explains that God had to die because God knew all of his darkest abysses and was compassionate. The man had to take revenge on God; a witness like this is unendurable.
Zarathustra feels pity, shame, and reverence in the presence of the man’s ugliness and suffering. Nietzsche believed that pity without shame was just another form of pride, a failure to see oneself in the sufferer. The man’s state makes Zarathustra feel pity on behalf of humanity as a whole; his appearance symbolizes humanity’s real poverty. Because God pitied the man’s condition, the man, who shares Zarathustra’s disdain for pity, decided that God couldn’t continue to exist.
Themes
Zarathustra is chilled by the ugliest man’s words, but he encourages the man to find refuge in his cave. He walks on brooding, thinking how poor and contemptuous man is. Zarathustra still hears a cry of distress and wonders if it’s the cry of a man who despises himself most of all. He loves “great despisers,” since man must be overcome.
Zarathustra sees man’s hatred of himself as honorable—it’s a kind of love for the Superman and a prelude to overcoming oneself.
Themes
