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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. Who has sat at this tree before Maali and Sena?

2. Where does Maali say he will meet DD on the night of his death in Fifth Moon?

3. Maali and Sena sit in a mara tree and observe what?

4. In Fourth Moon, what does Maali wish he had with him?

5. Why does Maali not want to go with Dr. Ranee in the Fifth Moon?

Short Essay Questions

1. How does Dr. Ranee help Maali?

2. Over the course of the Fourth excerpt, how does the author use Maali’s sorrow?

3. What happens the longer Maali occupies the In Between?

4. What is the significance of the mara tree?

5. Why does Maali spend the majority of his time focusing on Down There in the Fourth Moon?

6. "I was there to witness. That is all. All those sunrises and all those massacres existed because I filmed them. Now, they are as dead as me” (244). What does this quote mean?

7. Why do others in the Afterlife continue to discourage Maali's attachment to Down There?

8. How does the author use Sena’s character?

9. Why does Dr. Ranee want Maali to feel at peace?

10. What does Dr. Ranee teach Maali about good and evil?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What does Maali realize after the Department of Justice explosion? What does his time at the River of Births and in The Light reveal to him?

Essay Topic 2

How did Maali spend the night of his death? How did he hurt DD?

Essay Topic 3

The novel is set in 1990, against a backdrop of the real-life civil war that took place in Sri Lanka. At one point the protagonist writes a cheat sheet for an American journalist on the different factions in the war, which he signs off: "Don’t try and look for the good guys, ‘cause there ain’t none" (22). Is Maali being reductive here? Do you think this is reflective of real life in Sri Lanka?

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