The Ass

The Ass is both a literal beast in the procession of The King on the Right and The King on the Left and the unlikely focus of a ritual among The Higher Men. Its small, repeated bray becomes a comic counterpoint to philosophical talk and, later, to worship. The contrast gives the animal its significance: others load it with meanings of wisdom, humility, and divine patience, while its own contribution remains the blunt, recurring “Ye-a.”

Appearance and Role

The Ass first enters as part of a strange procession in the mountains and forests. The King on the Right and The King on the Left, dressed in crowns and purple sashes, drive a laden animal before them. Seeing two kings but only one ass, Zarathustra remarks on the incongruity from behind a bush. The scene introduces The Ass through its material condition: it is carrying a load and is being led by others, before anyone makes it a symbol.

That distinction matters throughout its appearances. The Ass does not offer an argument or explain itself; the words attributed to it are brays. Yet the people around it repeatedly treat its presence as an occasion for interpretation. Its burden and its apparent passivity supply a surface onto which both mockery and reverence can be placed.

Interruptions and the Last Supper

After the kings have spoken with Zarathustra, he responds with delight at their unexpected wisdom and proposes to compose a verse. At that moment The Ass finds speech, answering clearly and maliciously with “Ye-a.” The interruption breaks the movement from conversation into poetic performance: just as Zarathustra prepares to turn the kings’ remarks into verse, the animal inserts its own sound into the exchange.

The same bray returns after The King on the Right praises Zarathustra for speaking cleverly and contrasts a wise philosopher with an ass. The Ass replies again, and this time its interruption marks the beginning of the meal called “The Last Supper.” During that meal, the conversation concerns the Higher Man. The bray therefore does more than punctuate individual speeches: it recurs at a transition from the kings’ encounter with Zarathustra to the gathering and discussion that follows. The animal is present at the edge of their serious talk, where its sound repeatedly makes the distinction between human wisdom and foolishness unstable.

The Ass Festival

The Ass becomes the focus of a more elaborate episode when The Higher Men are found kneeling and worshipping it. The group includes the kings, The Abdicated Pope, The Sorcerer, The Voluntary Beggar, The Shadow, The Prophet of the Great Weariness, The Conscientious Man of the Spirit, and The Ugliest Man. Their worship turns the animal from a beast in a procession into the object of a collective religious performance.

The Ugliest Man begins a litany in praise of the worshipped animal. Its language presents The Ass as a bearer of burdens who has taken the likeness of a slave, is patient from the heart, and never says no. Those qualities are treated as grounds for veneration. The Ass, however, does not answer with a doctrine or a sacred utterance; it brays “Ye-a.” The repeated sound sits beside the litany’s solemn claims, exposing the difference between what the animal does and what its worshippers say its conduct means.

The episode is explicitly called “The Ass Festival.” At a point in the litany, Zarathustra can no longer contain himself: he cries “Ye-a” louder than The Ass and springs among the guests, pulling the worshippers up from the ground. His intervention makes the scene’s comedy physical as well as verbal. He warns that an outsider would judge the group either blasphemers or foolish old women, then singles out The Abdicated Pope and challenges him over worshipping an ass as God. The gathering’s adoration is thus interrupted and exposed as an act requiring explanation, not accepted as self-evident piety.

Comic and Thematic Significance

The Ass’s role depends on the distance between its simple, repeated bray and the elaborate meanings its companions attach to it. In the litany, burden-bearing, patience, and never saying no become sacred virtues; in the surrounding scenes, the animal’s “Ye-a” punctures statements made in its vicinity. The comedy arises not because The Ass delivers a competing philosophy, but because its sound persists while others turn its passivity into a theology.

Its appearances also unsettle the human characters’ attempts to divide wisdom from folly. The King on the Right’s praise of Zarathustra ends with an insult involving an ass, only for the animal’s response to usher in the meal devoted to the Higher Man. Later, the same creature becomes an object of worship for that company. The Ass’s recurring presence binds these reversals together: it is first a load-bearing animal, then an interruption, and finally the center of a ceremony whose solemnity Zarathustra breaks. The episode leaves its force in that contrast, not in any transformation or declared intention on the animal’s part.