Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in A Brief History of Seven Killings, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Violence vs. Peace
Masculinity, Sexuality, and Homophobia
Jamaican Culture and Identity
Politics, Power, and Corruption
Witness and Storytelling
Summary
Analysis
John-John recalls a time in South Beach, Miami, when a handsome young stranger got into his car and asked John-John to drive him “somewhere nice.” The young man ended up giving John-John a blowjob, but John-John could not stop thinking about Rocky. More memories come back to John-John: when he killed a man on a train track, when we had sex with a male friend at summer camp.
Since leaving his homophobic household, John-John has enjoyed a life of relative sexual freedom. However, this freedom means little to him if he can’t be with Rocky, and does not stop him continuing to lead a life of violence.
Themes
John-John has arrived at the house of the Jamaican he is supposed to kill. Griselda gave him keys, and he lets himself in. John-John enters the apartment and fires seven shots in the air. He hears a gasp behind him and turns around to find a white man, who throws mouthwash in his eye. The man chases John-John out of the building and down an alley; John-John keeps shooting at him, but none of the bullets are hitting. Eventually one of the bullets hits, and John-John drags the man’s body back into the alley.
Like most of the other killers in the story, John-John often murders people carelessly. It does not matter to him that the man whose apartment he has entered was simply in the wrong place in the wrong time and is clearly not the person he was aiming to target. He kills him anyway.
Themes
