65 pages • 2 hours read
Shehan KarunatilakaThe Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 4, Chapters 37-43Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 4: “Fourth Moon”
Chapter 37 Summary: “Curfew”
Ever since the outbreak of the war in 1983, violent events are followed by government-mandated curfews. Curfews allow the government to do at night what they can’t do in front of witnesses during the day. Maali watches as the police and Major Raja oversee the deposit of bodies at the crematorium.
DD tells his father that he quit his environmental advocacy firm and took a job with the United Nations. DD wants to make a difference in Sri Lanka, but his father thinks he is foolish.
Jaki again reviews what she knows of the marked phone numbers in Maali’s address book. She figured out that the Ace of Diamonds is Jonny Gilhooley. She wonders about Robert Sudworth of the AP, but DD thinks it’s Andy who works for the AP, not Sudworth. Stanley knows a representative from the arms dealer, Lockheed Systems, named Robert Sudworth.
The Queen of Spades is Elsa. Stanley did some research on Elsa and discovered that Kugarajah is linked to both the LTTE and the Indian Secret Service. CNTR is funded by Canada, Norway, and the US Fund for Peace.
They don’t yet know whose number is marked with the Jack of Hearts. The number for the King of Clubs belongs to Major Raja. The Ten of Hearts is the number for their own apartment. They figure that these codes parallel the labels on the envelopes of photographs Wijeratne confiscated.
Maali worries about people seeing the contents of his envelope for Ten of Hearts, which are all pictures of DD, Maali’s perfect 10.
Chapter 38 Summary: “Your Weakness”
Maali first met Stanley at a country club with Jaki and DD. They played badminton and discussed Sri Lankan identity. Maali, Jaki, and DD want to identify only as Sri Lankan, but Stanley understands the power of tribalism. Stanley gives a lecture about the reality of race, which Jaki sees as a man-made concept. Stanley “concluded that your race, your school and your family will dictate how the dice of life will roll for you” (235).
DD and Maali would often argue about Stanley’s politics. They often discussed leaving Sri Lanka together, which was only ever talk. In the early days, everyone assumed that Jaki and Maali were dating, but Maali was secretly hooking up with DD, keeping their relationship secret even from Jaki.
Chapter 39 Summary: “Black Moon”
Maali overhears Wijeratne on the phone with Stanley. He tells Stanley that giving up Maali’s photographs or releasing them to the public is not in Sri Lanka’s best interests. Maali watches from outside the crematorium as 77 bodies burn during the curfew. Wijeratne has someone add the box of Maali’s photographs to the fire in the crematorium.
Chapter 40 Summary: “Three Rats”
Sena joins Maali. Maali notices that Sena floats differently and that his scars look different. They debate the value of karma, and Sena declares that the ghosts in the In Between make up the universe’s self-correcting mechanism. Maali follows Sena to a truck, where the garbage men, Balal and Kottu, join Drivermalli. Sena is also followed by the ghosts of a recent purge of JVP insurgents. Sena riles the ghosts up with a speech about anarchy. Sena reveals to Maali that he has learned new skills from the Mahakali, a powerful demon.
Sena sends some of his followers to appear in their ghoulish form on the street, making Drivermalli swerve off the road. He tries to press the brakes, but another ghost has wrapped himself around the brake pads. Drivermalli hits an electric pole, which causes an explosion. Innocent bystanders are killed, but the ghosts help Drivermalli out of the car and beat back the flames on his body. The ghosts drag Balal and Kottu over to a mysterious figure wearing a chain of skulls.
Chapter 41 Summary: “The Mask”
Maali sits in a tree and tries to ignore the sounds of his name on the wind. He has decided that no one will find his negatives, and there is no fixing the living world he has left behind. But Maali can’t help but fly toward the sound of his name. He watches as Elsa packs up the CNTR offices. Kugarajah encourages her to stay, but Elsa knows that something bad will happen to her if she does. Kugarajah promises to help her sneak out of the city during curfew on a bus with Germans but advises her to tell Wijeratne that she has a lead on the negatives and can get them by Sunday. Outside, ASP Ranchagoda and Major Raja watch the building entrances, on the lookout for Elsa. Major Raja is with a masked man.
Chapter 42 Summary: “The Palace”
Major Raja hired Maali to take photographs of the atrocities that paramilitary organizations inflicted. In the meantime, Major Raja was overseeing his own government atrocities. Major Raja fired Maali over claims that Maali was having sex with some of the male soldiers. In his office, Major Raja molested Maali. He then accused Maali of being HIV-positive and spreading the disease among his soldiers. Major Raja brought Maali on a drive to a gated, run-down mansion called the Palace. The Palace is a prison where Major Raja keeps people the military tortures and interrogates. Maali watched in horror as they passed cell after cell of people being abused. Major Raja punched Maali and sent him away.
Chapter 43 Summary: “Chat with Dead Priest (1962)”
Maali never returned to the Palace, but he came to understand that no one left the Palace alive. Now, as a ghost, he perches in a tree outside the Palace, still afraid to go in. A ghost on the rooftop beckons him to enter. The ghost used to be a priest but has now discovered that there is no God or karma, only positive and negative energy. Maali joins the priest on the roof, where they feed off the energy emitting from the screams coming from the building. They discuss the history of colonialism in Sri Lanka and its contemporary ripple effects. The priest morphs into the Mahakali and pins Maali down.
Part 4, Chapters 37-43 Analysis
In Part 4, nihilism sets in. Maali loses hope that his negatives will be found, and he starts to think that nothing matters. This character development, from hopeful to hopeless, reveals that the In Between keeps spirits stuck in a rut. Maali can’t do anything to help his negatives come to life, but he also is forced to witness all the horrible things going on in the living world. Maali can’t act on anything, nor can he contribute his narrative. Therefore, the In Between world becomes a space in which character development stagnates.
Sena’s character doesn’t develop into an anarchist leader so much as an active version of himself, helped by the powerful demon, the Mahakali. But Sena and his followers’ attack on humans marks a dangerous new twist in the world. Sri Lanka is already defined by violence between the living, and now innocent people must reckon with invisible spirits wreaking havoc. If one doesn’t die in a raid or massacre, now they might die in a carefully curated ghost attack. With this, structures of violence are adopted by the spirit world. Sena insists that anarchy is part of the universe and that everyone, alive or dead, is fighting for their own space and piece of power. This echoes other points made throughout the book that propose that violence is part of the human condition, and hierarchical violence is inherent to the human experience. Notably, Sena is misinterpreting anarchism, which does not advocate for violent individualism but proposes horizontalism, eliminating hierarchies, and voluntary communities as the path forward. With Sena’s misinterpretation, Karunatilaka subverts the claim that violence is productive or inevitable and asserts that hierarchical violence is in itself the problem, not who wields it. This is emphasized when Maali resists Sena’s theory, even at his least hopeful. He refuses to follow Sena and participate in the attack on humans, reprising his role as a witness to violence rather than a perpetrator. Through Maali’s passivity, Karunatilaka encourages readers to retain hope that humans aren’t doomed to replicate cycles of violence.
Sena’s attack brings up the question of whom or what Sena is avenging. Balal and Kottu, the garbage men, are small cogs in a larger machine of oppression. Though they disposed of Sena’s body, they are not the ones who killed him. Balal and Kottu are desensitized to their disgusting jobs, so they have necessarily given up a piece of their humanity and conscience to fulfill their role, but this makes them victims, too. Rather than having honest jobs, they are threatened and paid to engage in the illegal disposal of bodies. Drivermalli is also victimized because he has little choice but to drive the vehicle that brings about this destruction. What’s more, five innocent bystanders are killed in Sena’s attack. Sena’s attack, therefore, causes more damage to society, which detracts from his mission of revenge.
In Part 4, Karunatilaka presents the Palace as a symbol of the horrors of unmitigated power. The torture and death that occurs in the Palace are state-sanctioned and supported by other governments. It takes place in what could be a magnificent building, which juxtaposes the beauty of Sri Lanka with the violence that befalls the country. But the Palace also echoes the colonialism of the past, emphasizing the role that Western imperialism has played in the Sri Lankan war. The Palace is a desperately horrific place for the living, and it’s not so different for the spirit world. The Mahakali feeds off the negative energy emanating from the screams, symbolizing the insidious nature of evil. When people are dehumanized, their pain doesn’t weigh on anyone’s conscience, and the pain of the dehumanized feeds the superiority complexes of people (or demons) in power. Mahakali is the demonic spirit version of characters like Major Raja or Colonel Wijeratne, emphasizing that it is difficult, if not impossible, to escape suffocatingly oppressive power structures.
