The last chapter touches on how Nietzsche's 1882 book The Gay Science took a look at one of the same themes present in Groundhog Day. I will quote from the selection that Friedrich wrote to show how similar they in fact are;
What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: "This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence, even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!"
This is a enlightening concept; Christianity with a linear view of time says it is the future when we are in heaven that gives value to the present. This seems to be life denying and corrupts our view of our time here on earth. This alternative presented in The Gay Science, we rather than moving on to a better or worse place after death, we would relive our life over and over again, exactly as we had before. This concept is known as the eternal return.
Phil Conners experiences this, although instead of a lifetime, it is one day. Both in Groundhog Day and The Gay Science you begin to start asking similar questions after reflection. What if you learned there was no afterlife or no tomorrow, and that you were doomed to live this life over and over again, exactly as you have this time? How would this affect the way you live your life? For me it compels me to choose to integrate myself, past, present and future into something worthwhile.
-From Chicago, It's Kyle Sweeney
