It Azarthsyra

Thus Spoke Zarathustra is one of the strangest books ever to achieve the status of a classic and represents Nietzsche's boldest attempt to find a literary form appropriate to his revolutionary ideas. Zarathustra, commonly known by his Greek name, Zoroaster, was an ancient Persian prophet who was the first to preach that the universe is engaged in a fundamental struggle between good and evil. Nietzsche appropriates Zarathustra because, as he explains in Ecce Homo, "Zarathustra created this most calamitous error, morality; consequently, he must also be the first to recognize it." Through Zarathustra, Nietzsche tries to preach a nobler alternative to the Judeo-Christian worldview. Throughout the text, we find Nietzsche playfully subverting elements from the Old and New Testaments, particularly in reference to the life and ministry of Jesus. For example, at the age of thirty, Jesus spends forty days in the wilderness being tempted by the devil. By contrast, Zarathustra happily spends ten years in the wilderness, suggesting that he is more cheerful in spirit and less needful of others. We also see Zarathustra preaching against "the herd," whereas Jesus portrays himself as a shepherd leading a flock, and toward the end we find a parody of the last supper.

We should be careful not to mistake Nietzsche's criticism of Christianity, and particularly his proclamation that "God is dead," for smug atheism. Certainly, Nietzsche has a great deal of venom to expend on Christianity, but he is perhaps even more troubled by the spiritless atheism that he fears will follow it. The claim that God is dead is more of a sociological observation than a metaphysical declaration. Christian morality and its attendant concepts of good and evil no longer have such a powerful hold on our culture as they once did. Nietzsche worries that the world is being increasingly consumed by nihilism, the abandonment of all beliefs. He expresses this worry in the figure of the last man, who represents the triumph of science and materialism. Nietzsche would likely recognize in early twenty-first century consumer culture a perfect expression of the last man, where we direct our tremendous wealth and power to insulating ourselves