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 5, Chapters 44-48Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 5: “Fifth Moon”
Chapter 44 Summary: “In Dreams, I Walk”
Dr. Ranee saves Maali from the Mahakali’s grasp. She reminds the Mahakali that it cannot take Maali until his seven moons are over. Dr. Ranee brings Maali high into the sky, where they rest on a cloud. She tells him that if he commits to the Light, she can teach him how to whisper to the living and visit them in their dreams. Dr. Ranee helps him access Jaki’s dreams, instructing him to communicate with her through pictures, not words that she’ll forget. Maali recalls sleeping in the same bed as Jaki when he first moved in with her, before she understood that they wouldn’t become a couple. He tries to give Jaki hints about the playing cards. Then, Maali visits his mother’s dream and tries to give her the negatives.
Chapter 45 Summary: “What Yakas Want”
Dr. Ranee explains that in the In Between, there isn’t a strict hierarchy between the ghouls, yakas, and demons. Yakas are motivated by their thirst for fleshly pleasures and sap pleasure from the living to feed themselves. She warns him again about Sena, who is in debt to the Mahakali and must deliver other souls to it. He promises again to make it to the Light before his seven moons are done. Dr. Ranee then tells him how to get to the River of Births.
Chapter 46 Summary: “FujiKodak Shop”
Maali’s negatives are taped to two albums. Jaki finds the albums and the instructions Maali wrote in case the negatives were ever lost, saying to bring them to Viran at the FujiKodak shop. Jaki wakes up DD to ask him who Viran is and can’t hear Maali’s ghost yelling at her not to involve DD.
On their way to the FujiKodak shop, Jaki believes they are being followed by plainclothes men in a van. They meet Viran, who knows what to do with the negatives. Before his death, Maali had told Viran that if he ever received the negatives, he should make two copies of each. For the first batch, one copy needs to go to Mr. Clarantha at the Arts Centre. The second copy needs to go to Tracy, Maali’s half-sister. Maali made these arrangements when photojournalists started getting killed.
Jaki and DD leave the negatives with Viran to develop. They then visit Clarantha, who confirms that he can receive the photographs but is sad to hear about Maali. Maali then watches a conversation over a poker game in which arms dealers discuss a negotiation.
Chapter 47 Summary: “Chat with Dead Suicides (1986, 1979, 1712)”
Maali watches Jaki gamble and drink at the casino. He watches alongside the ghosts of people who died from suicide. He asks them why they never found the Light, but they just laugh at him.
Jaki is joined by an anchor named Radika. Meanwhile, on the street outside the building that houses the casino and what was once the CNTR office, the masked man and ASP Ranchagoda argue about Elsa and the empty office. They discover that Elsa is back in Toronto, having successfully evaded their watch.
Chapter 48 Summary: “Pocket Jacks”
While alive, Maali was constantly in a cycle of losing and doubling his money. Maali recalls playing poker with Karachi Kid, an arms dealer, on the last night of his life. He had been excited to tell DD and Amma that he was quitting his jobs. He was celebrating paying off his poker debt to Karachi Kid when Jonny and Sudworth surprised him at the bar. Jonny and Sudworth don’t want Maali to quit because his work has helped them arrange important meetings between foreign arms dealers, disguised as journalists, and people in power in Sri Lanka.
Maali also recalls witnessing a bombing and using the cyanide capsules he kept in case he was interrogated to help a mother and son who were maimed in the bombing die more quickly.
After the surprise meeting with Jonny and Sudworth on the final night of his life, Maali went up to the sixth floor of the building with the casino’s bartender to hook up. He had left a note for DD to meet him at the casino later that night, but DD arrived in time to see Maali finish hooking up with the bartender. DD charged at Maali.
Part 5, Chapters 44-48 Analysis
Part 5 provides new hopes and drastic plot twists. Dr. Ranee brings Maali into the clouds, where he finds peace for the first time. In the sky, the world of violence and betrayal that informs the living experience dissipates, and there is true beauty. Maali learns patience and perseverance from Dr. Ranee, who doesn’t hold resentment about her life and death. She acts as Maali’s guardian angel, saving him from demons and constantly encouraging him to free himself in his Light. As such, she is a foil for Wijeratne’s demon guardian, whose protection allows Wijeratne to perpetuate injustice rather than seek justice. Dr. Ranee also teaches Maali how to whisper to people through dreams. Notably, she instructs him to use pictures, not obvious directives, to help communicate with the living. People forget what is said in dreams, but they remember the images they wake up with. Through dreams, Maali is given intimate access to his loved ones’ psyches. This act is much gentler and more symbolic than the way Crow Man teaches Sena to whisper to the living. Maali doesn’t abuse this power; he uses it for good and to reconcile with his mother. This demonstrates that Maali’s character is, at its core, good because he holds on to his love for others and his hope for the future. By contrast, Sena’s ghostly appearance becomes more vivid and even beautiful as he gains more power, revealing that feeding off negative energy uplifts him. Thus, taking advantage of other people’s pain boosts the abuser, a metaphor for the victimization and dehumanization of others.
Part 5 reveals and resolves some of the mystery that informed the first parts of the novel. During his Ear Check, the Helpers identified that Maali had killed someone, which Maali denied. But in Part 5, he remembers helping a mother and child die peacefully during a bombing raid. Though he technically killed them, he also helped them by offering a quick end rather than leaving them to suffer and die painfully. Maali’s culpability in these deaths reinforces his humanity. It also reveals that Maali was not just a photographer on the sidelines, bearing witness without participating in the action. The incident with the capsules reminds Karunatilaka’s readers that witnessing the suffering of others necessitates action—one cannot simply be a passive observer. In war situations especially, doing nothing in the face of suffering leaves one culpable. Part 5 also reveals that the night Maali died, he was starting a new page in his life. He had finally resolved to pay off his gambling debts, quit his jobs, and escape Sri Lanka with DD. Maali was on the cusp of freeing himself, or at least attempting to. Ironically, that night did mark the start of a new chapter, and his death frees him in a different way.
In a major plot twist, Part 5 implies that DD killed Maali. In Chapter 48, Maali recalls DD charging at him on the sixth-floor balcony. Maali was cheating on DD throughout their relationship, and the suggestion is that his hubris and callousness end up ruining him. There are many reasons why Maali could have been killed as he made a lot of enemies working in the seedy world of the war. It would have been unsurprising if Maali died while on assignment or at the hands of his immoral bosses. It was improbable that DD would kill him. This surprising plot twist emphasizes the randomness of human life and the unpredictability of the world.
