The style of Part 3 of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is not only prose but also poems. It shows introspective, cheerful and calm mood; halfway between melancholy of part 2 and Dionysian ecstasy of part 3.This part contains the Climax of the book, "the exhibition of the sustained intellectual passion which gives Nietzsche his place among the world’s great men". Eternity is external recurrence, and the child the main character, Zarathustra wants to have by “eternity” is himself. Once Zarathustra reaches end of his self-education, the fulfilment is celebrated with trilogy of poems.
“It is returning, at last it is coming home to me-my own Self and those parts of it that have long been abroad (…)”
Zarathustra is climbing the high mountain and speaking to his heart, he is trying to find the summit (solitude). He is ready to reach deeper down to “blackest stream, as that is his destiny”.Then he speaks of his vision of the solitary man and that he discovered the Spirit of Gravity, “his Devil archenemy”. Nietzsche describes Zarathustra’s fear of falling, failing his quest as once he thrown himself high to discover truths and to overcome himself (overcome the logic) he must be destined to fall.
Hymn to solitude in a model revaluation of three voices (once he is back in cave), exhortation to cheerfulness. “But a man of my sort does not avoid such an hour: the hour that says to him: ‘Only now do you tread your path of greatness! Summit and abyss – they are now united in one!”
The scene with the shepherd with a snake in his mouth could symbolise that once Zarathustra shares certain theories with others there is no taking back of his words. Even though shepherd managed to bit snake’s head of he was “no longer shepherd, no longer a man – a transformed being, surrounded with laughing!” This quote also corresponds to how Zarathustra’s (“God’s Killer”) teaching attracts people, and he becomes a Higher Man in their eyes.
An inner dialogue is taking over the main character while he is travelling through the sea, he is thinking about what has to be overcome to seal his perfection. He realises that there is still a long way to go.The next morning he concluded that the happiness runs after him, and that was because he did not run after women, “happiness, however,” he says, “is a woman”.
Chapter 'Before sunrise' is written in a very poetic style, it is a melancholic and quite a romantic (poetic descriptions of the nature), Zarathustra is lonely; beauty of nature reminds him of a woman who he is far away from (perhaps reference to Nietzsche missing the love of his life).
When Zarathustra came back to land, he went among people to learn what had happened while he had been away. People became ‘small’, and all they want is that nobody does them harm. He sees that as “cowardice” and they call it a virtue. There is not enough fight in them and too much calm, they are “modest and tame”, what makes them a “man’s best domestic animal.”He feels that his time has not come yet and there is no one else thinking the way he does, people still don’t understand him but on the other hand, “of what consequence is a time that has no time for Zarathustra.”
‘On the mouth of Olives’ is another poetic monologue, slowing the action down. The chapter ‘Of Passing By’ is quite a visual and dramatic chapter. Discovers here that there are things that will not change, people that don’t want to progress and they are only to be passed by. In chapter ‘Of the Apostates’, he notices that people who he used to know have settled and turned into “stay-at-home” ones. ‘The Home Coming’ describes thoughts of solitude again; Zarathustra learns that loneliness and solitude are two different things. He summarises all the lessons he have learnt throughout the journey. “And especially that ‘he who wants to understand all things amongst men has to touch all things.” (Empiricism) When people misunderstood him, he shouldn’t have indulged them more than he did himself.
Zarathustra speaks of humans that “they crucify him who writes new values on new law tables, they sacrifice the future to themselves- they crucify the whole human future!”
To overcome humans- he has to overcome himself but, he shouldn’t expect from others what he expects from himself as not everyone is as strong as he is. And to overcome human’s logic is the way to become a worlds-man (Darwin- evolution). Becoming a superman is not the end of the evolution; Zarathustra says “There it was too that I picked up the word ‘Superman’ and that man is something that must be overcome, that man is a bridge and not a goal”.
“The good – have always been the beginning of the end”.
The stream of his thought finishes on a song of “Yes and Amen, love to eternity”.
The University of Winchester Journalism Course
History and Context of Journalism, Part IV,
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part 3
