The Overman

The Overman is a short story written by Upton Sinclair and first published in 1919. The theme is about the final destiny of humanity.

The title of the story refers to the concept of "Superman" by Friedrich Nietzsche, making his own interpretation of it, which already implies that it is a deeply philosophical story.

The story is narrated through Edward, a scientist by profession, whose brother Daniel is shipwrecked on a boat trip and is lost at sea. However, years later, Edward meets a person who claims to be a survivor of that trip and tells him that several castaways survived and reached an uninhabited island.

All the survivors escaped from the island except Daniel, who decided to stay there. Edward decides to go look for his brother and strangely enough he also ends up shipwrecked...

This is the story of Edward -, as he told it to me only a few days before he died; he told it as he lay half paralysed, and knowing that the hand of death was upon him.
I am by profession a scientist. My story goes back some fifty years, when I was a student. I had one brother, Daniel, five years younger than myself, a musician of extraordinary promise. We lived abroad together for a number of years, each pursuing his own work. About my brother, suffice it to say that music to him was everything-love and friendship, ambition and life. He was a man without a stain, whose lower nature had been burned out by the flame of art. I think the one tie that bound him to the world was myself.