The opposites and paradoxes return as in the prologue, as do various characters with whom Zarathustra interacts. I think it would pay off to look at each section as a whole, rather than as a simple series of events that are interpreted on their own without regard to the order in which they are placed or the section that contains them. If as Mark, the organizer of this little book klatch, says and Zarathustra returns at the end of the book to speaking to the sun, bringing his interactions with “others” full circle, then it would seem to me that the book is structured in a purposeful manner. Again I return to the question of why Nietzsche chose to write this book as a “fictional” narrative? By doing so he opens up the text to even more levels of interpretations than if he simply maintained an authorial/authoritative voice. Using the mask of Zarathustra, and the “others” Z. speaks at allows a multitude of personae from behind which Nietzsche can speak. I wonder how much, if any, the play of masks in Greek Drama is in play in this little tragedy? I don’t have an answer to this, but each scenario seems to allow space for quite a distinct performance on Zarathustra’s part. I certainly don’t think one can read what happens simply on a surface level, or at face value, as one of the reading group’s members suggested when “Of Old and Young Women” was discussed. Nietzsche provides a context, the larger framework of the section of the book, placed within the larger framework of the text itself. Wheels within wheels, with an attempt to avoid, or at least obfuscate, a single “god” position from which to view or control the meaning?

“But you yourself will always be the worst enemy you can encounter; you yourself lie in wait for yourself in caves and forests…
You will be a heretic to yourself and a witch and a prophet and an evil-doer and a villain.
You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flames; how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?” (Zarathustra Penguin, Hollingsdale trans. p. 90)