The Letter to a Reader

Dear Reader,

This blog you see before you, looked much different one week ago. In fact, it was pretty empty one week ago, but the point I’m trying to make is that this project, this idea that I love and I’ve looked into thoroughly, only came about after a discussion with Ms. Romano last week. Before that my project was a mess.  I had had this really cool idea about writing about the death of God, and how European history, especially the scientific revolution and industrial revolution, contributed to the death of God. But this went nowhere, and I spent several days doing nothing but trying to think about how I was going to write this. But then, after talking to Ms. Romano about my problems, I ditched the idea as too complicated. Lost with nothing to do, I turned to my favorite place, Wikipedia, where, when reading the article about the Ubermensch, I discovered something interesting. In the Ubermensch in Popular Culture section, there was a note about how the creators of the superhero Superman, had been inspired by the Ubermensch to create their character. Intrigued, I delved into the concept further, and found a wealth of information about the topic, all of it interesting. I began to realize, that Superman’s creators misinterpreted Nietzsche’s Ubermensch. Doing more research into the Ubermensch and into the character of Superman, I realized that throughout the years, the character has become even more like the figure portrayed in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. So that’s what I wrote my paper on.

For my genres, I chose a variety of topics. The first one I did, the flash fiction, started out as a story about Superman first hearing about the Ubermensch and Nietzsche, before it evolved into something very different, and in my opinion, very powerful. While I struggled at first to come up with other genre ideas, I eventually came up with some that I liked. Ms. Romano inspired my compare and contrast one after hearing about what I was arguing about, and I chose the art one because someone in my AP Euro class told me it would be cool and I agreed with them. For my last genre, I wrote a sonnet. I like writing sonnets, they are my favorite kind of poetry to write, so naturally I chose to write one.

As for my golden thread, the idea stems from a quote Russell Crowe, who plays Jor-El in the new Superman movie, said in the first trailer for the movie. “You will give the people an ideal to strive towards. They will stumble, they will fall. In time, they will join you in the sun. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders.” I remember when I first saw this trailer, I thought this was the coolest line about a Superhero ever. While the movie itself was mediocre, this quote still stands out as one of the coolest parts of the movie. What I love most about this quote however, is how perfectly it fits with the Ubermensch. Nietzsche wrote the Ubermensch as an ideal for humanity to strive towards, the ultimate form of humanity. Superman, is the ideal for people to strive for, and he has inspired millions across numerous generations with his sense of justice and morals. For incorporating this golden thread into my genres, I thought I did it pretty well in all except the art genre, where I incorporated it into the title.

Overall I had fun doing this project, especially when I finally figured out what I was doing. The only thing I’m still not sure of, is what genre I’m going to present. My favorite is the flash fiction, but I don’t think that would be appropriate for me to do, nor do I want to. The art I find boring, but it would make the most sense to present. I don’t even know how I would present the other two options, but fear not, I will figure something out.

Signing off,

Alex Dzwierzynski

Genre No. 4: The Scenario

What Would Superman Do?

The Scenario: It’s December, Christmas time, the geese are getting fat, please put a penny in the old man’s hat and all that holiday crap that Lex Luthor can’t stand in the least. And so, inspired by the Grinch, Luthor decides to steal Christmas from the poor helpless people of Metropolis. But instead of stealing their presents as the Grinch would have done, he just decides to kill them all. So he launches a rocket aimed straight at Metropolis. But wait, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s …

The 1930s era Superman, here to save the day. As Superman rushes towards Metropolis, the rocket moves closer and closer to impact. As the good people of Metropolis see the rocket come down from the sky, they panic, chaos and violence hit the street. Buildings are burned and looted as the criminals take advantage of the situation. And just as the rocket is about to strike town hall, Superman appears to save the day. Leaping up, he bats the rocket away from the city. He then proceeds to murder all the criminals looting the stores. Meanwhile, the rocket that was batted away from Metropolis lands just outside the city limits in a forest, destroying millions of acres of wildlife and killing thousands of plants and animals. His job done and Metropolis saved, Superman travels to Luthor’s secret headquarters and kills him, taking justice into his own hands and saving Metropolis once again from the constant villains that wish to destroy it. The world fearfully cheers as Superman, the Last Son of Krypton, the man who takes justice into his own hands, and the protector of the common man at all costs, vanishes into the night.

The Scenario: It’s December, Christmas time, the geese are getting fat, please put a penny in the old man’s hat and all that holiday crap that Lex Luthor can’t stand in the least. And so, inspired by the Grinch, Luthor decides to steal Christmas from the poor helpless people of Metropolis. But instead of stealing their presents as the Grinch would have done, he just decides to kill them all. So he launches a rocket aimed straight at Metropolis. But wait, it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s …

The modern-era Superman, here to save the day. As Superman rushes towards Metropolis, the rocket moves closer and closer to impact. As the good people of Metropolis see the rocket come down from the sky, they panic, chaos and violence hit the street. Buildings are burned and looted as the criminals take advantage of the situation. And just as the rocket is about to strike town hall, Superman appears to save the day. He flies up to the rocket, using his super strength to counter the rocket’s engines and the sheer power of gravity. He flies the rocket up into outer space, where it detonates, harming no one. Returning to Metropolis, he rounds up the criminals and leaves them in front of the police station, while using his super breath to put out the fires that raged around the city, saving the city from over-excessive property damage. Accepting congratulations from the mayor as well as well as the key to the city for saving it once again, Superman flies off to confront Lex Luthor in his lair. Bursting in, Superman easily captures the villian, and takes him to a maximum security prison run by the federal government. And so the job is done and Metropolis is saved, leaving Luthor’s justice to the proper authorities and being hailed across the land as an ideal to strive for, a champion of the common man, the Man of Steel.

So what’s the difference?

Genre No. 3: The Piece of Art

The Ideal Walks Among Us

Genre No. 2: The Flash Fiction

Clark Kent's Final Repose

It was the sixth times those fabled words were repeated that Clark lost it. Slamming his mug of coffee on the table, he got up and left without a word, aware of the surprised glares of Perry, Lois, Jimmy, and the rest of the Daily Planet staff behind him. As he walked out of the meeting room, he tried to remain as emotionless as possible as he walked past the cubicles and the seemingly mindless worker bees that occupied them. The newspaper industry had gone to shit ever since the internet had taken off in the turn of the millennium, and with that change had come a change in the type of people the Planet hired, boring emotionless, Millennials, who only thought about themselves. Clark hated them. Daily Planet sales had been plummeting for years, and everyone on the newspaper was in a bad mood, but no one’s mood was worse than Clark’s. As he got into the elevator, he figured this outbreak had been weeks coming. Signing, he pressed the button for the roof and watched as the elevator doors closed. It had always amused him how stupid the humans he worked with were, why you would have an elevator that led to an exposed roof with no ledge? He had saved enough jumpers over the years to know that open roof access was a bad idea. Nevertheless, the roof had served him well over the years, it was the perfect place to take off in pursuit of crimes, although in the past few years he hadn't used it as much he would have liked. “You’re getting old Clark” he said to himself as he stepped out onto the terrace. So it was true that the other guy hadn't made an appearance for a couple years, but that didn't mean he was dead. “I’ll show them” he thought, “I’m not dead, just retired.” In the years following his retirement, crime had spiked back up, and Luther, old and senile though he was, still owned most of the city. Metropolis was in a bad place, but he knew that if he went out for one more night, the whispers of his death would stop. He’d be idolized again, oh how he loved their adoration! It had fueled him almost as much as the Earth’s pleasant yellow sun. To be an ideal for them to strive for, that was what both his father’s, real and adopted, had told him to be. Taking off his suit (for he was getting to old to rip them off anymore), he stood there on the terrace, looking down at the passing cars and people below, scurrying around like ants through a maze. Oh, to fly again! It would feel so good to feel the wind brush against his face, to feel the wetness of the clouds against his soft skin. Not wanting to wait another moment, he leaped off the building. And as he soared through the sky, tears drenched his skin, he was flying again. He was back, Superman was not dead, and he was more alive than ever! The news was everywhere, but the Daily Planet had the inside scoop. It was their bestselling paper in the past five years, crowds lined up for a whole street behind newspaper stands just to get a look at the front page and its cover story,  The Death of a God: Superman Goes Splat.

Genre No. 1: The Sonnet

The Coming of the Ubermensch

Throughout the fields they see the halls of hell,

Where Satan’s wrath and rule brings much despair,

Where life does end and where the demons dwell,

The fields of hell where souls roam everywhere.

He was supposed to come and save these men,

The Alpha and Omega is a lie,

For he is dead and men are doomed again,

To wander round as ghosts which they decry.

Behold him, Nietzsche come to save the day,

An ideal prophet for all eyes to wend,

The Ubermensch to save us from dismay,

He brings a new beginning and an end:

A bird, a plane, a man from outer space

The Man of Steel has come to save our race

The Expository Essay

The Other Side of the Bridge

He goes by many names, the Man of Steel, The Last Son of Krypton, Kal-El, and Clark Kent, but it is by the name given to him by the Daily Planet, Superman, that the most famous hero of all time is most recognizable by. Arguably the most famous comic book character in history, Superman has worked his way up from a lowly comic book character to an an American cultural icon. It is to Superman to whom we compare ourselves, and his weakness, kryptonite has become a metonym for a general weakness or fault. Possessing a strong American-based moral view of what’s right and wrong, Superman stands for everything Americans hold dear, truth, freedom, liberty, and justice. Although most associate his origins with the influential Action Comics #1, published in 1938, Superman actually appeared five years earlier, in a science fiction story entitled The Reign of Superman, published in 1933, in which he is unrecognizable, and is based off a misreading of the Ubermensch of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. While the modern Superman bares little resemblance to the original Nietzsche inspired one, his evolution as a character over the years away from his original depiction has actually increased the amount of similarities that he shares with the Ubermensch of Nietzsche lore, so much so that he now serves as an almost perfect model for the Ubermensch that Nietzsche presents in Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

In the new Superman movie, Man of Steel, Jor-El, the Kryptonian father of Superman speaks to his son in a message, telling him that he “will give the people an ideal to strive towards.” This characterization of Superman, as a hero for people to look up to, has been portrayed for years in the comic books. In the DC universe, the normal people as well as other superheroes highly respect Superman, and look towards him as a savior and a hero, a force for justice, someone to aspire to. But Superman was not always the man who people looked up to. In his first appearance, The Reign of Superman, the Man of Steel resembled a certain bald super villain more than Christopher Reeve, and acts like him to, possessing telepathic powers instead of his later ones, and being intent on world domination and villainy. Although Superman’s co-creator Jerry Siegel claimed that this early version of Superman, and his spiritual successor Lex Luthor were based on the Ubermensch of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, it seems more evident that he is actually based off a common misreading of Nietzsche. In their interpretation, Superman’s co-creators  made the same mistake in reading that the Nazi’s did, interpreting the Ubermensch as a superior version of man whose rightful throne is the world. Even as Superman began to evolve into his red and blue wearing modern form, he still possessed aspects of the original characters, including dubious morals, and a solemn disregard for the safety of others and the damage of property in the pursuit of his goals.

Superman continued his destructive rampage until 1954. Widely considered to be one of the worst acts of regulation in the United States, and standing as a huge violation of the first amendment, the Comics Code Authority was adopted in 1954, with every major publisher eventually falling under its sway. The Code changed the way Superman was portrayed completely. Instead of being the overpowered being with little concern for anything except getting the job done, Superman was transformed into Nietzsche’s Ubermensch, although not intentionally. Throughout Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche portrays the Ubermensch not as a villain, but as a hero who will save the world from the nihilism that comes with the death of God. The Ubermensch, with his new morals and values will become an ideal for humanity to strive towards. And that, an ideal to strive towards, in the words of Jor-El, is what Superman became. He started working alongside the police, and because this was the Cold War, Code Superman also began to work with the US government, fighting against communism and its influence by spreading the United States approved message of justice, liberty, and freedom for all. Just as the Ubermensch serves the people as a guide in their time of need, safely carrying them out of the nihilism and back into the light, Superman serves as a hero to inspire people, and in the continuing of Jor-El’s words from earlier, “You will give the people an ideal to strive towards. They will stumble, they will fall. In time, they will join you in the sun. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders” (Man of Steel).

In the Superman mythos, there is a variation of Superman’s coming to Earth, a wrinkle in time one could say. In the distant future, after the sun has gone red and the rapture has come, a scientist named Jor-El sends his baby Kal-El back in time, to when the sun was still a bright yellow, and humanity was still on that bridge, between the lesser and the greater. Superman was sent to serve as the Ubermensch for the people, a prophet guiding humanity into becoming the Kryptonians, or Ubermenschs (Millar). That idea, the idea of eternal recurrence, the predestination paradox, whatever one wishes to call it, forms a central part of the story of the Ubermensch and Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the idea that humanity is always destined to become the Ubermensch over and over again, that “man is but a rope stretched between the animal and the Ubermensch,” between the lesser and the greater (Nietzsche 11). The Ubermensch is not merely an ideal to strive towards, it is our destiny. In that way, the story of Superman, his origins and who he’s become over the years, have resulted in a Superman that shares much more with the Ubermensch then just a name, he is the Ubermensch. 

Works Cited

Man of Steel. Dir. Zach Snyder. Prod. Christopher Nolan. Warner Brothers, 2013. Film.

Millar, Mark. Superman: Red Son. New York: DC Comics, 2003. Print. Elseworlds.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Trans. Clancy Martin. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1885. Print.

Siegel, Jerry, and Joe Shuster. "The Reign of Superman." Science Fiction: The Advance Guard of Future Civilizations Jan. 1933: n. pag. Print.

Nietzsche Said It Before John Lennon

Nietzsche Said It Before John Lennon

There’s an ancient story, passed down by the Hebrews unto modern day, which tells of a monumental tower reaching higher up than any structure ever before, a way to elevate humanity up to God’s level. Well, God can’t have that now can he? Of course not, so he destroys the tower and scatters the humans building it across the world, instilling in them different languages so that they would never try and touch him again. Similarly, the ancient Greeks also possess stories that tell of what happens when humans try to fly too close to the sun, they always fall. And yet, as the years went by humanity continued to progress, to reach further than any thought imaginable, to reach into the realm of gods. However, whenever they got too high, too close to the sun, they always fell, same as Icarus and Bellerophon. Until they didn’t. It was in the late 18th century when mankind first pushed the limits of God without punishment. In the two industrial revolutions that followed, mankind progressed further technologically then they had in the past thousand years combined. Their towers touched the clouds without issue, their medicine cured the diseases that had inflicted mankind for millennia, and, most importantly, for the first time they were able to fly close to the sun without getting burned. The world was changed, science now explained things that religion could not, it was science, and not faith in God that was propelling man forward. It was in this era, this changing world, when German philosopher named Friedrich Nietzsche first uttered “Gott ist tot,” God is dead. By that phrase Nietzsche never meant that God was physically dead (although he never believed in God in the first place), but more that his lessons and values, passed down from the ancients through the Bible were dead, outdated. In a world where science was king, what good were the 2000 year old values that had been written at a time where man could not even fathom the technology humans possessed in the 19th century? To Nietzsche, the Bible was in need of a second edition, one where all the old, outdated values were thrown out, and replaced with new relative ones. He did just that in the publishing of Thus Spoke Zarathustra, his masterpiece, in which a new prophet, Zarathustra, spoke thus of the new values for mankind while proclaiming the ultimate truth, the death of God. Thus, the philosophy of Nietzsche as well as his book ThusSpoke Zarathustra serve as a response to the death of God and the values that died with him, by allowing the active nihilism that follows God’s death to create new values and morals, and better fit the changing world of industrialization that ruled the nineteenth century.