Everything Sad Is Untrue

From the start of Everything Sad is Untrue, stories become a persistent theme. Daniel opens his narration by thinking about his parents’ view on poets, knowing that the stories that he recounts aren’t exactly perfect, but that they are an amalgamation of the truth remembered and passed down. He knows stories have different versions, and poets are “just trying to remember six thousand years of history and all the versions of all stories ever told” (1). He also almost immediately uses 1,001 Nights as an example, recounting the tale of how Scheherazade was forced to marry a king who killed his bride each morning and how she would tire just before finishing a story so that the king would allow her to live another day.

For Daniel, who addresses his novel to his teacher, Mrs. Miller and to readers, he too is trying to maintain interest in his stories—both those of his arrival in the United States and his current life there. The reader is the king, and it is the readers Mrs. Miller’s favor he wishes to hold. Throughout the novel, he emphasizes the importance of this role, saying things like, “Reader, you are the king, so let me tell you, when Aziz married Hassan, the two were already in love and one of them was already destined to die” (70). This moment comes just before a transition, as if the morning has come and readers must allow Daniel to live to hear the end of the tale. He switches to another story, only to return later to detail what happened to Aziz and her new husband. It is a constant attempt to extend the attention he gets.

Daniel approaches his readers this way because he believes that stories can provide a way of connecting; a way of understanding. He also is himself trying to maintain his memories of his ancestry and his life in Iran, having traveled at such a young age to the United States. His mom even changed his name from Khosrou to Daniel so that it wouldn’t keep being mispronounced. In many ways, Daniel experiences an identity crisis and feels that he is so close to losing himself in this new life. He does not perfectly remember his life before, tallying the sparse memories of his grandparents and of those he encountered in refugee camps and struggling with the limitations of his memories of his father left behind in Iran. He recounts what he can to build a connection and to fortify these memories within himself.