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Chapter 7
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Martyr!, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Martyrdom and the Meaning of Life
Addiction and Sobriety
Queer Love and Repression
Iranian Identity vs. American Identity
Summary
Analysis
Keady University, 2014. In the early spring, Zee starts to wonder if he loves Cyrus. They’ve lived together for about a year, both having recently graduated, and Cyrus wouldn’t get sober for another year. The two of them have a regular gig doing yard work for a man named Jude who promises them fresh groceries in exchange. They fear he may be a creep, but all he does is watch and then give them fresh groceries at the end. Cyrus has procured some fentanyl, and he divides it into 64 equal doses, each one occupying a square on his old glass chessboard.
Although the novel primarily focuses on Cyrus, it also frequently shifts perspectives, and this one features Zee, revealing that Zee sees Cyrus as not just a friend but romantically. Set in 2014, this passage captures a moment during Cyrus’s addiction when he still felt invincible and when a potential creep like Jude or a lot of fentanyl could do little to slow Cyrus down.
Themes
One day, Jude asks Cyrus and Zee to chop wood because he’s having a bonfire that evening. Neither Cyrus nor Zee knows how to chop wood, but they figure they’re smart enough to figure it out. After some fumbling with the large ax, they begin to make some progress. Eventually Jude comes back out and shows them what they’re doing wrong, before going back to watching.
Cyrus and Zee’s inability to chop wood shows how they are disconnected from nature and survival skills. The ax perhaps also represents something powerful that takes responsibility to wield, and both Zee and Cyrus are at points in their life where they have few responsibilities.
Themes
In the middle of chopping, Cyrus brings the axe down and it bounces out of his hand, cutting through his shoe. Blood comes out. Zee goes to Jude to get help, while Cyrus is in shock. They take him to Jude’s tub. Zee wants to get Cyrus to the hospital, but for some reason, Cyrus seems reluctant. He says he doesn’t want to go unless he’s going to die otherwise. In the end, they don’t go, although Cyrus will have a limp for weeks and his wound will never really heal.
Cyrus’s decision not to seek treatment for a wound, only for it to bother him for the rest of his life, is classic Cyrus. Zee witnesses the way that Cyrus deals with a physical wound in his foot, but in many ways, this passage also represents the hidden wounds from his past that Cyrus has also been carrying around inside of him.
Themes
Before leaving Jude’s, Cyrus and Zee get Jude to pay them $120 to take care of Cyrus’s injury and buy him new shoes. Cyrus also gets him to throw in a wind chime. Cyrus and Zee buy a lot of alcohol, then go back to host a party at their apartment, where they lick the fentanyl chessboard and listen to Of Montreal. The next morning when Zee wakes, all the guests have left, and Cyrus has passed out on the couch, a dirty bandage on his foot that has become red near the toe.
In spite of injuring his foot, Cyrus pretends that nothing is wrong, and everybody throws a big party. Still, the blood that Zee sees coming through Cyrus’s bandage is a sign that Cyrus’s carefree attitude right now might not be able to last forever, and one day the wounds that Cyrus ignores will come out, whether he wants them to or not.
Themes
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