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Of the Tree on the Mountainside
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
The world has many preachers of death, or those who teach departure from life. Such preachers have not even become men yet. When they see suffering, aging, or death, they see these things as confirmation of their denunciation of life, but they’re really refuting themselves: they’re seeing only one aspect of life.
Zarathustra picks back up on the concept of those who despise life. Because they only see the worst things of life, these “preachers of death” denounce life as a whole. Not only do they fall short of the Superman, they aren’t even wholly human.
Themes
Zarathustra says that those who gain from preaching death, or “eternal life,” entangle others. He says that those who really love life ought to be less devoted to the moment.
To Zarathustra, preaching an afterlife is no different from preaching death—it’s just another way of denouncing life. These “preachers” put obstacles in front of susceptible people. Those who love life, from Zarathustra’s perspective, are less concerned about the present moment than about the future of humanity—that is, the Superman.
Themes
