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Of the Adder’s Bite
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
According to Zarathustra, any person who is a self-conqueror, a lord of one’s own virtues, should desire a child. A child is a “living memorial” to one’s liberation; one can’t build something beyond oneself without first building oneself. Similarly, the role of marriage is to help someone build beyond himself: marriage should be the will of two to create something more than the two. The “superfluous” do not have such marriages, although they claim that God has blessed them.
Zarathustra sees children as expressions of the creative will to power, and the role of marriage is to promote that goal. By “the superfluous,” Zarathustra refers to the masses. Such people claim their marriages are sacred, but in Zarathustra’s view, they really serve no purpose for humanity.
Themes
Zarathustra thinks that most marriages are nothing more than a match between a “saint and a goose,” and a series of small follies followed by “one long stupidity.” Love for woman is just an impersonated love that ought instead to lead a man to a higher calling. The bitterness in even the best love should make someone long for the Superman, the desire of every creator.
In Zarathustra’s view, a man shouldn’t settle for marriage when he could be focusing on progressing the human race toward the Superman instead. The typical marriage is “one long stupidity” that falls far short of Zarathustra’s vision for humanity.
Themes
