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 6, Chapters 49-53Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 6: “Sixth Moon”
Chapter 49 Summary: “The Pangolin”
Maali watches as his developed negatives, now printed photographs, are being placed in frames at the Arts Centre. DD is there, looking through photographs Maali took of pangolins. DD cries as he looks through the photographs Maali took of them together.
The Arts Centre creates a public gallery of Maali’s photographs. Maali reflects that “Your plan was to orchestrate this from exile; instead, you have staged it from beyond the grave” (306). DD also looks through the photographs Maali took of the men he’d been with, including Viran and Jonny. Enraged, DD grabs Viran and slaps him. Clarantha looks through the photographs and calls them beautiful. Though they were not taken for display purposes, he wants to display them as a sign that they won’t hide anymore.
Chapter 50 Summary: “‘Law of the Jungle. Photography by MA’”
Clarantha and Viran finish setting up the gallery. Clarantha advises Viran to hide away for a couple of weeks to avoid difficult interrogations over the gallery. Maali admires the exhibition, relieved that his life’s work and trauma are finally being released.
Chapter 51 Summary: “Chat with Dead Dogs (1988)”
Maali is surprised when two ghost dogs talk to him. They ask him where the River of Births is. He gives them the instructions Dr. Ranee told him, but the directions are vague, and the dogs get annoyed. A dead leopard appears and tells Maali that the conservationist who accidentally killed him died by suicide, teaching the leopard that some humans are good.
Chapter 52 Summary: “Chat with Dead Tourists (1987)”
Maali meets the ghosts of dead tourists looking around his gallery. They are taken aback by his photograph of the Air Lanka 513 flight, which had been bombed. These tourists are three of the 21 who died in the bombing. The other ghosts followed their bodies home or found the Light, but these ghosts decided to stay. Now the ghosts remain tourists by traveling through people’s dreams.
Chapter 53 Summary: “Slaying Monsters”
Sena meets with Maali. He is even more vivid than before and is followed by an army of spirits. Sena brings Maali to a worn boarding house, where the ghosts keep Drivermalli hostage. Kugarajah is Drivermalli’s interrogator.
Sena brings Maali back to the Palace. Sena’s next mission is to avenge the deaths of the hundreds who were killed by the man with the mask. Maali watches a conversation between Detective Cassim, ASP Ranchagoda, and the Mask. Cassim refuses to bear witness to the torture in the Palace, which is illegal and horrifying, so he storms off. Maali sees that the Mask has Jaki captured and prepped for interrogation.
Part 6, Chapters 49-53 Analysis
In Part 6, Maali’s living friends keep his memory alive by displaying his photographs at the Arts Centre. The Arts Centre is a symbolic space for Maali because it was a safe space when he was alive. The Arts Centre gave him many friends and lovers; it was the only place he could truly be himself. Maali’s trust in the Arts Centre outlasts his mortality. The Arts Centre is therefore symbolic of a hopeful LGBTQ+ community in Sri Lanka, where gay people can’t live their fullest lives in public. In Sri Lanka, sex between men is illegal. Article 365 of the Sri Lankan Penal Code is a holdover from colonial British Ceylon, which emphasizes that the adoption of institutionalized anti-gay bias dates from Western imperialism. In 1995, this law was rewritten to ban sex between women as well. The penalty for sexual acts between members of the same sex is up to 10 years in prison, a harsh sentence that highlights the danger of being openly gay in Sri Lanka. In 2017, the Sri Lankan Supreme Court ruled that people convicted under Article 365 should not be imprisoned, but the Supreme Court doesn’t have the power to enforce this. This law still stands today, making Karunatilaka’s criticism of the way gay people must hide in Sri Lanka relevant to contemporary readers. Other laws in Sri Lanka also prohibit cross-dressing and transgender identity. This emphasizes that DD and Maali would have never been able to live happily and publicly together in Sri Lanka. It also explains why Maali’s photographs of his sex partners with are dangerously controversial. The Arts Centre is a necessary safe space, a refuge, and a symbol of hope and freedom.
Karunatilaka extends his critique of hierarchies through the ghost characters of two dogs and a leopard. This portrayal of the animal world in the In Between demonstrates that animals have souls too. Even though human beings often elevate themselves above other species, animals in this novel have souls, opinions, feelings, and dreams. The dogs grow frustrated with Maali’s surprise that they can speak to him in the In Between. This frustration emphasizes an outsider’s perspective on humanity; in the grand scheme of the afterlife, human society seems asinine due to constant wars, conflicts, and selfishness. But the leopard provides an opposing opinion; despite being killed by humans, the leopard has witnessed human compassion and empathy. Karunatilaka uses these animal ghosts to symbolize the paradox of humans being capable of both evil and good. Thus, Karunatilaka advocates for humanity, even as he points out its fallibilities.
In Part 6, Karunatilaka references the Air Lanka 512 explosion. On May 3, 1986, 21 people, mostly foreign tourists, were killed in a bombing aboard an airplane. The plane was on the ground in Colombo, and the bomb was snuck onto the airplane during baggage loading. The bomb was programmed to detonate mid-air, and its early detonation saved the lives of hundreds of people who had not yet boarded the plane. The Sri Lankan government’s investigation blamed the bombing on the LTTE, but Karunatilaka’s novel calls into question the reliability of this determination. The bombing was a shocking escalation of violence, but it also ended tourism in Sri Lanka. This historical event cemented Sri Lanka’s cycles of violence because, without the tourist industry, there was no motivation to cease violence for the sake of the tourist economy. This also heightened Sri Lanka’s international reputation for violence, which became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In Part 6, Maali’s hopes to find the Light are dashed. When Jaki is taken into illegal custody at the Palace, where people are tortured and murdered, he realizes the high stakes of his mission. His photographs no longer matter because Jaki’s life is more important. Part 6 ends with the revelation that Jaki will be tortured for Maali’s negatives, heightening the drama and tension just before Maali’s final moon.
