Zarathustra's Prologue and Three Species

Summary of "Zarathustra's Prologue and Three Species"

At the beginning of the story a man named Zarathustra who was thirty years of age had left his home to go live in the mountains. He had lived in solitude of the mountains for ten years. The text said, "He enjoyed his spirit and his solitude, and for ten years he did not become weary of it." I believe that Zarathustra move to the mountains and lived a solitary life to get more in touch with himself. He probably wanted to get to know himself more spiritually. Until one day he finally decided to leave his life of solitude and begin another journey of his own.

During his journey down the mountain, Zarathustra did not encounter anyone. All of that began to change as Zarathustra was walking through a forest and encountered an old man. The old man began to speak to Zarathustra. It had seemed like the old man had met Zarathustra many years ago; he believed that he had changed after living a life of solitude. I believed the old man caught on to the fact that Zarathustra was leaving the mountains, and assumed that he was going to back to civilization. The old man told Zarathustra, "You floated in the sea of solitude. Alas, will you go ashore?" When the old man said that, he meant that Zarathustra was finally going to be among other people for the first time in along time.

After journeying through the forest, Zarathustra had finally arrived at a town. He noticed that many people where gathered around a marketplace waiting for a rope dancer to perform.

Zarathustra decided to speak to the people. He wanted to teach the people the way of the superman. He made a lot of deep philosophical points about the superman. It seem like no matter how much he tried to prove his point to the people of that town, he just could not get to them. All they did was laugh and ridicule him. Because of this, it made him sad. Zarathustra mentioned, "They do not understand me; I am not the mouth for these ears." He started to think the reason behind this is that he had lived in the mountains for too long. He believed living in mountains had made his soul calm and clear, and that is the reason the people do not understand him.

I will briefly talk about one the three speeches. In the first speech, he talks about the three metamorphoses of the spirit. He mentions that the spirit becomes a camel,