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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Darius the Great Is Not Okay, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Friendship
Family
Persian Identity and Culture
Mental Health, Depression, and Connection
Bullying
Summary
Analysis
A few weeks later, after the family has gotten plane tickets and visas, Darius tells his lunch companion, Javaneh Esfahani, that he’s leaving for Iran tomorrow. She promptly sprays Dr Pepper out her nose, tucks her hair back into her headscarf, and says, “Wow.” Javaneh isn’t really a friend, but she tolerates Darius. She says she’d love to see Iran, but her parents don’t want to risk the trip. Then, she notes that Darius will be there for Nowruz and will miss Chaharshanbeh Suri, but Darius privately isn’t upset about that.
Traveling to Iran can be complicated and sometimes dangerous for American citizens, which Javaneh and Darius both are. Still, on some level, Darius’s family and Javaneh both express that the risk would be worth it to see where their families come from—the trip would connect them more deeply to their culture.
Themes
Chaharshanbeh Suri is the Tuesday night before Nowruz, and it’s celebrated with copious amounts of Persian food and fire jumping. Mom and Dad take the family to the celebration at Oaks Park every year. Dad has long legs and is a great fire jumper; Darius doesn’t enjoy it at all. Apparently, Dad tried to jump while holding two-year-old Darius once, and Darius screamed so much the family had to leave. When Dad tried it with Laleh years later, she clapped.
The implication here is that Darius sees himself as less Persian than Laleh, since he couldn’t be excited about fire jumping with Dad in the same way that she could. Also interesting is that Dad—who isn’t Persian—is such a skilled fire jumper. This may also contribute to Darius’s sense that he’s not Persian enough, as even Dad seems to integrate into Persian culture more easily than Darius does in some contexts.
Themes
After lunch, Darius goes to the school nurse to take his pills (the school’s Zero Tolerance Policy toward drugs means the nurse has to dispense all medications). Darius uses a crinkly paper cup to get water; he can’t take his pills dry like Dad does. The one time he tried, he got a Prozac stuck in his throat and it was disgusting. Darius was only on Prozac for a few months, but they were the worst of his life. It gave him mood swings that were basically “Mood Slingshot Maneuvers.”
Darius continues to compare himself to Dad in a way that’s somewhat perplexing and perhaps unhealthy—it’s not a moral failing, for instance, that Darius can’t take his pills dry. As he details his experience on Prozac, a common antidepressant, he makes it clear that depression isn’t always easy to manage. Finding the right medication can be a challenge, but again, that doesn’t mean the depressed person is morally suspect or a failure.
Themes
Dad never talks about his diagnosis; it happened in college and medication has been helping him for years. But this meant that by the time Darius got diagnosed and was trying to find the right medication, Dad seemingly had forgotten what it’s like to struggle with mood swings (or maybe he never experienced them in the first place). Medication seemed to immediately turn Dad into a “high-functioning Übermensch.” Prozac was the third medication Darius tried, and after six weeks, it caused a Slingshot Maneuver. When a boy in Boy Scouts made fun of Mom’s accent, Darius hit the kid. He was enraged, then felt sorry, then felt angry again, and then ashamed. Darius isn’t ashamed that he stood up for Mom, but Dad was very disappointed.
Interestingly, Darius doesn’t seem to offer up any concrete evidence that Dad’s relationship to medication has always been easy and positive. There could be more to this story than Darius realizes, if Dad has decided to keep any struggles with finding the right medication private. As Darius sees it, hitting the kid who made fun of Mom was maybe not the best choice, but it was righteous in any case. It’s cruel, after all, to make fun of a person’s accent. So it’s possible that Darius is misinterpreting Dad’s disappointment here—or at least where Dad is directing his disappointment.
Themes
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