/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.3644769]

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle - a nietzschean interpretation

"In the light of the moon, a little egg lay on a leaf."

The moon's light comes from the sun, it is not its own, much like our consciousness is the product of unconscious forces interacting, dominating and being dominated. Appearances (that the moon gives its own light) deceive us as our consciousness and reason might have us believe in their supremacy. Life is essentially reactive, it reacts to its medium. Under such conditions, man is preparing to be born.

"One Sunday morning the warm sun come up and out of the egg come a tiny and very hungry caterpillar."

On Sunday, the day of worship (as life has plenty of things for man to worship, it is man’s way of being), but also God's day of rest (His absence, man is a product of chaos), man is born. The will to power that drives and also results from the forces that gave him birth and also dominate his very existence drive him to not just react to his medium, but also attempt to dominate it. Thus "He started to look for some food."

"On Monday he ate through one apple, but he was still hungry."

Man's will to power as will to truth (one of its many forms) gives him the illusion that he created knowledge: One (looking for the one in multiple) Apple (traditionally, at least, the fruit of knowledge). Thus man created morality, knowledge of good and evil.

From Thursday to Friday, man uses his new knowledge to dominate his surroundings, including fellow men: all the fruits that he eats, no matter their numbers or type, are digested into the morality that took form in his first day: you must be like me, exactly like me, or you will burn in hell. Do not try to affirm yourself, your difference and individuality, or you will burn in Hell. This, even the strongest empires (the large number of fruits eaten on the last day) fell to Christianity, to universality and unity in the principles.

(to be continued)

[Anonymous No.3644794]

(cont.)

But on Saturday something happened. The sheer amount of things (here as pizza, hot dog, chocolate, etc.) negated through eternal concepts, that unify the fundamental plurality of life (and thus turn against life), now turn against man’s attempt to control them and he feels it. „That night he had a stomach ache.”

„The next day was Sunday again. The caterpillar ate through a nice green leaf. And after that day he felt a bit better.”

On Sunday, the day of worship and God’s rest (absence, withdrawal from the world), man changes tactics. He takes distance from the concepts that turned against him. He gets a healthy dose of modesty, a green leaf. But that wasn’t enough. He felt a bit better, he was not healed.

“Now he wasn’t hungry any more. And he wasn’t a little caterpillar any more; he was a big - fat - caterpillar.”

But “a bit better” wasn’t enough. Now man is left with only himself and still stuck in the past that he created. What Nietzsche calls the superior man (for example the humanist) is just this: someone that tries to keep morality, but without the supernatural. Morality without religion, but still the reactive (herd, slave) mentality. The fat caterpillar that wasn’t hungry anymore is the man still dominated by the entire culture that preceded him, but he compromises, retreats into lucidity.

“He built a small house, called cocoon, around himself.”

Man’s lack of hunger quickly turned sour: humanist values did not satisfy him, “all is futile!” he screamed and thus retreated into a schopenhauerian denial of the will, a retreat from the world into the coziness of his new home: the nothingness of the will, a small, modest house.

(to be cont.)

[Anonymous No.3644799]

(cont.)

“He stayed inside for more than two weeks.”

Man could not stay in this state forever, despite his best efforts. The nothingness of the will turned into a violent will to nothingness. Man then went against his newest invention, the cocoon. But the will to nothingness, unlike the nothingness of the will, was the first sign of recovery from the diseased culture and its effects.

„Then he nibbled a hole in the cocoon, then he pushed his way out and … He was a beautiful butterfly.”

Thus nihilism was overcome through nihilism, and the history of Occidental metaphysics and culture came to an end with one final massive step: seeing that nothing so far has worked, man moved to something completely different, overcoming the essentially reactive nature of man through the Dionysian affirmation of life, of plurality and glorification of the „illusory” beauty that tradition hated. He had „become a butterfly”, freed from the chains of the reactive forces that dominated him and their manifestations, morality and gnosticism, to fly towards the Overman.

[Anonymous No.3644862]

The a shoppey one was better

[Anonymous No.3644887]

>>3644862
Nah. But I'm gonna post it anyway in case the other thread 404's.

[Anonymous No.3644897]

>3644862
>schoppy one

requesting Schoppy version

[Anonymous No.3644962]

>>3644887
Yeah

This Nietzsche one is kind of shitty

[Anonymous No.3645028]

>>3644794
>superior man (for example the humanist)
I'm assuming this was supposed to be 'inferior', not 'superior'.

IMO the butterfly fits better with Nietzche than it does with Schopey. With Schopey it felt out of place.

[Anonymous No.3645104]

>>3645028
Sorry, I probably should have used brackets. Nietzsche calls these types "superior man" ironically because they consider themselves superior (they no longer ascribe to "silly superstitions"), but fail to see that morality itself is the problem.

[Anonymous No.3645118]

>>3644962
3deep5u

[Anonymous No.3645384]

>>3645118
>penguin, all too penguin

I remember this guy who wanted penguins shopped as Nietzsche once

[Anonymous No.3645485]

>>3645384
That's the thread where I got them from I think.