The City
The city is a marketplace and a marketplace is devoid of originality and ideas. The symbolism of the city is inevitably linked to Nietzsche’s rejection of the herd; the crowded populace is not ready and perhaps not capable of receiving unpleasant truths that threaten their comfort. Not by accident is the key element of city life associated with sewers; the city is the sewer of knowledge.
Bees
Although as a collective entity, bees represent a herd mentality, in another example of Nietzsche’s propensity to push the limits of self-contraction and paradox, bees take on a very positive symbolic connotation in this work. The single-minded devotion of the bees to the production becomes a primal symbolic act that carries all the weight of refusing to be all too human and instead breaking from the herd by committing oneself to industrious study and work.
Barrel Organ
A negative symbol of apprehension without comprehension. The barrel organ can be programmed to make music, but it is doomed to exact repetition; a mechanical instrument minus the soul required to make music rather than merely reproduce sound. It thus a symbol for all learning without understanding and intuition.
Beer
Beer is here a symbol that become specific to the German culture. Along with newspapers which engender domestic ritualistic habits, beer has a soothing effect on intellectual curiosity. Beer is the national narcotic of the Germans and a fundamental obstacle to their ability to break from the herd and reject the imposition of nationalism made manifest by the likes of Bismarck and, eventually, even Nietzsche’s one-time hero, Richard Wagner.
Masks
Mask are a recurring symbol throughout the writings of Nietzsche and often are used as metaphors for how philosophers distance themselves from herd thinking, but in “Human, All Too Human” the symbol is engaged for the practical association with the title. Masks in this sense are a symbol of the human predilection to disguise true natures that would be viewed negatively by the others and project a false image of their character that is more readily accessible and acceptable. Lending a layer of sophistication to the symbol is the reality that at times the false image which is projected is an example of self-delusion on the part of the wearer.
