Intro

In Avatar: The Last Airbender, there’s a scene where Zuko stands on a mountaintop, screaming into a storm. A storm is raging, but Zuko doesn’t mind. The scene lasts only 34 seconds, but in my opinion, it’s the pinnacle of the entire series—a masterpiece of character writing. Why, one may ask? For a very simple reason. Here, Zuko (or rather, the scriptwriters) conveys a message of profound depth and complexity. In this short piece, they included elements such as man vs. nature, man vs. God, or man vs. himself. All of this was contained in the character of the exiled prince, who was only 16 years old at the time.

Zuko vs. Nature

Man versus nature was realized by Zuko going to complete solitude. Like Jesus for 40 days in the desert. Zuko went somewhere in the mountains in the Land of Earth. The weather is not favorable in any way. A huge rainstormis currently underway. Zuko is all soaked, but that doesn’t stop him from expressing his anger at the world. The storm itself also perfectly symbolizes the situation in the palace in the Fire Nation, where the hero grew up. For there, too, he did not have it easy, as his father wanted to eliminate him. The downpour at one point covers Zuko’s tears, thus partially hiding his grief. In contrast, the most important element here is the storm. The scene takes place just after Zuko learns how to redirect lightning. Zuko personifies nature in this way, seeing his father in it. Shouting that he never held back to punish him or damage him in one way or another. Zuko finally had the opportunity to take revenge. To show what he can do, however, he did not get that opportunity directly on the mountain.
Zuko’s struggle with the storm is a perfect illustration of the philosophy of Romanticism. The concept of the sublime is most fitting here.It is the experience of something so powerful and overwhelming that it evokes both terror and awe. In modern interpretations, the sublime is an experience that pushes human reason to its limits, exposing our cognitive contradictions and limitations. The prince’s clash with the storm allows him to feel his smallness in a world where he is battered both externally and internally. This element also shows the greatness of Zuko’s spirit, as he was able to understand what was going on around him and what he himself was feeling. With this understanding, he was able to challenge it.
Man versus god was realized directly through Zuko’s speech itself. The prince’s cry is not only frustration, but also a primal urge to unload his will. To show himself to the world. To challenge it. Nietzsche would write that it is a manifestation of the will to power. Zuko, as a person deprived of the power and status he enjoyed as a child, tries to prove his existence and assert his existence. He attempts to do so by unloading his will on the only force worthy of the challenge.

Zuko vs. Zuko

On the other hand, from the perspective of Carl Jung’s psychology, Zuko is not screaming directly at the storm itself. He is screaming at his own shadow. At all those parts of himself that he hates and fears - his anger and brutality. These traits he has inherited and associates with his father. The storm is a mirror of Zuko’s inner conflict, who on the one hand craves his father’s attention and recognition. On the other hand, the young prince is afraid of his father and the very traits that led to his own expulsion. The hero is filled with inner bitterness and a desperate desire to find himself in a war-torn world.

Zuko’s reborn

Zuko screaming at the storm is an almost literal illustration of Albert Camus’s concept of metaphysical rebellion.. It is a rebellion not against a specific enemy, but against a world that offers no answers. The prince is not screaming to get an answer or to change something. He screams because the world does not answer and does not change.

“The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Zuko happy.”

—Definitely not Albert Camus

In thisway, Zuko can be seen as a kind of Sisyphus.Not because hewon in the end, but because he did not give up all the time. For Camus, awareness of the absurd does not lead to total resignation, but precisely to rebellion. After rebellion, one stops looking for the improvement of one’s ego in external systems like the state, honor, praise from outside, but comes from within. Its source is the act of defiance.
Adding to this, at the very end the philosophy of Kierkegaard, for whom despair was a path to self, Zuko also combines this element. The prince experiences despair because of who he is, who he is not, who he wants to be, and who he could be. In Kierkegaard’s case, the highest form of despair is that despair because of self-loathing. The despair that many probably feel in the current hustle culture because they don’t feel too fit, too active, too productive. Because they don’t live up to other people’s expectations like Zuko. Everyone figuratively has a nation, a father, and a world that they carry like Zuko, and they don’t necessarily belong. Despite all the absurdity, this is very good, because despair leads to authenticity. One must first die to live. In the same way, Zuko must die as a prince and be born simply as Zuko by internally processing his suffering.

Outro

We are all Zuko, in a way. We don’t defeat monsters or catch the Avatar; we simply learn to exist within our contradictions. There is no grand catharsis, no easy answer. There is only an absurd life in an absurd world. There is doubt, a mountain, anger, and a storm. And for that reason, each of us is, in part, an absurd character in our theater.

Bibliography

These particular books affected the overall shape of the article

  • Albert Camus - The Myth of Sisyphus
    This is the foundational text for the essay’s comparison of Zuko to a happy Sisyphus. Camus argues that acknowledging the world’s absurdity is the first step to freedom, framing Zuko’s struggle not as a path to victory, but as a meaningful act of defiance in itself.
  • Albert Camus - The Rebel
    This book directly explains the concept of “metaphysical rebellion” used in the essay. It helps distinguish Zuko’s cry against the fundamental injustice of his existence from a simple political or personal grievance against his father.
  • Søren Kierkegaard - The Sickness Unto Death
    This is Kierkegaard’s masterwork on despair, which the essay uses to frame Zuko’s ultimate transformation. It argues that only by confronting the deepest despair—of not being oneself—can an individual make the leap toward an authentic existence, just as Zuko had to “die” to be reborn.
  • Carl Jung - The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious
    This collection is essential for understanding the concept of the “shadow” - the repressed, dark aspect of the psyche. It provides the vocabulary to interpret Zuko’s battle with the storm as an externalization of his internal war with his inherited anger and brutality.
  • Friedrich Nietzsche - Thus Spoke Zarathustra
    While not a systematic treatise, Zarathustra is the poetic expression of the “will to power” mentioned in the essay. It frames Zuko’s defiant scream at the storm not as mere frustration, but as a necessary, life-affirming assertion of his existence against a silent universe.
  • Edmund Burke - A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
    Burke’s work is the origin of the concept of the sublime, which the essay applies to Zuko’s confrontation with the storm. It provides the language to analyze how an experience of overwhelming terror and awe can paradoxically lead to a profound understanding of one’s own spirit and limitations.