Everything Sad Is Untrue

One Thousand and One Nights—or 1,001 Nights, as Daniel stylizes it—is a real collection of Middle Eastern folk tales as told by Scheherazade to the king to preserve her life. Daniel sees himself as Scheherazade, telling the stories of his family and his life to his reader, the king, who we later surmise to be Mrs. Miller, his teacher, though readers of Everything Sad is Untrue, also take on an important role as king in this text as well. Daniel wishes to impress readers, to immerse them in his stories so that they better understand him and where he came from. He wishes so much for readers to see him as human.

The stories are important throughout the novel. Daniel thinks about stories as a way of his remembering the past, but it becomes clear as the novel goes on that Daniel wishes to pull his readers in close to show his humanity and to erase the feeling of difference between himself and his readers. He loses confidence at different points, and yet, after seeing his father weaving stories of the dastan, the story land, for his class, his belief in stories as points of connection is renewed. This renewal inspires him to continue like Scheherazade, bringing readers to the end in which he, his sister, and his mother sit in a motel room, once again ready to start anew.