Martyr! Literary Elements

Contemporary Literary Fiction

The story is primarily set in the U.S., though certain sections take place in Iran or in surreal dream settings. The narrative spans several decades, from the 1980s to 2017.

The novel switches its perspective in nearly every chapter, though the majority is written from Cyrus's point of view in the third person. However, other chapters follow Roya, Arash, and Ali Shams.

The tone is reflective, melancholic, and at times humorous. The mood is introspective, heavy, and bittersweet.

The protagonist is Cyrus Shams. The antagonist is his existential despair and nihilism.

Cyrus struggles to understand life, death, and artistic legacy. His internal battle is one of finding meaning, both in his writing and personal existence. His familial relationships also contribute to the tension in that he believes his mother Roya died senselessly, and his father struggled to support the surviving family.

The climax occurs when Cyrus arrives at the Brooklyn Museum to find that Orkideh has passed away. He subsequently learns the truth about his mother's identity.

Cyrus's constant preoccupation with death and martyrdom foreshadows the personal crises he later experiences. Several details suggest that he possibly dies in the end, and the final chapter is a dream sequence of the afterlife. For instance, Akbar references the Greek myth of Icarus, specifically Bruegel's painting that depicts the world moving on after Icarus's death (Chapter 22). This hints at the potentially quiet death that Cyrus fears and possibly experiences. In addition, when Cyrus checks out from his hotel, the employee at the front desk asks him, “Did you make anything cool while you were here?” (Chapter 24). This unusual question could be posed to Cyrus on his way out of life.

Cyrus reflects on his role as a medical actor, where he "pretends to die" for money (Chapter 7). This trivializes death and reflects Cyrus's emotional numbness.

The novel references both religious and literary works, including Islamic texts, classical Persian poetry and art, and contemporary Western popular culture. Several academics are also mentioned. For example, Cyrus talks about Edward Said in Chapter 12, who was a renowned Palestinian-American scholar, literary critic, and political activist, best known as a founder of postcolonial studies. In the following chapter, Akbar mentions the Russian novelist, philosopher, and moral thinker Leo Tolstoy in the quote, "The iron law of sobriety, with apologies to Leo Tolstoy: the stories of addicts are all alike; but each person gets sober their own way" (Chapter 13). Other chapters showcase Cyrus's imagined conversations between family members and figures like Lisa Simpson, a caricature of Donald Trump named President Invective, the poet Rumi, and the former professional basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Akbar uses rich imagery, especially when describing everyday life and surreal moments of clarity for Cyrus. One example reads, "The city’s skyline of desiccated towers blinked absently, some of them crumbling around their edges" (Chapter 32). Akbar was a poet before setting out to write this novel, and his propensity toward highly lyrical lines shines through at different points in the book. One prominent example is the appearance of ghosts, such as in the following passage: "But Cyrus was, for his part, more than a little surprised by the words as they came out his mouth, how they gave shape to something that had long been formless within him. It was like the language in the air that night was a mold he was pouring around his curiosity. Flour thrown on a ghost" (Chapter 7).

A paradox is present in Cyrus’s simultaneous desire for artistic immortality and his acknowledgment of life’s inherent futility.

– Parallelism is employed in Cyrus's philosophical musings, particularly in repeating patterns of thought regarding death, martyrdom, and writing. The repetition reflects the cyclical nature of his internal conflicts.

– Cyrus recounts to Orkideh the time he wandered around the city for a day when he was around 15 years old to grieve for his mother (Chapter 17). The intense thirst he experienced after crying resembles the thirst of the dying soldiers that Arash encountered (Chapter 16).

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– Cyrus refers to his persistent anxiety as a "doom organ" that "pulses all the time" (Chapter 1). Akbar personifies this abstract feeling.

– Akbar personifies Cyrus's former love for alcohol when referring to it as Cyrus's "true love, his bedrock, his soulmate." According to Cyrus, "Alcohol didn’t demand monogamy like opiates or meth. Alcohol demanded only that you came back home to it at the end of the night" (Chapter 5).