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7. The Life Wheel
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Anil’s Ghost, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Justice, Power, and Truth
Violence, War, and Greed
History and Memory
Work and Meaning
Westernization and Identity
Summary
Analysis
In Buduruvagala, thieves approach a statue of the Buddha and pry open the stomach, hoping to find treasure inside. When they don’t find anything, they flee, leaving the statue damaged. Authorities then call in Ananda to oversee the reconstruction of the statue. Ananda works tirelessly and institutes innovative methods that result in an immaculate restoration. Meanwhile, a new statue of the Buddha is being constructed nearby. Both projects—the reconstruction and the new statue—are completed around the same time.
This chapter functions as a kind of coda or afterword to the novel. Though the principal action of the novel finished on a note that underlined the inherent destructiveness of the civil war and the fact that the war will continue, this chapter provides a glimpse of hope. That is, this passage shows that though the violence of the war once caused Ananda to be so consumed by despair that he attempted to take his own life, he now seems to have regained some sense of meaning, suggesting that some form of renewal after experiencing the tolls of violence is possible.
Themes
When the new statue is finished, Ananda is appointed to perform the ceremony to paint the Buddha’s eyes. Only after those eyes are finished does the statue truly become a statue of the Buddha. On the day of the ceremony, Ananda and his nephew climb ladders. By looking in a metal mirror his nephew holds up, Ananda chisels the eyes of the Buddha before reaching for his paints. As Ananda paints, for a moment, he feels as if he is equipped with an almost divine sight and as if he sees what the Buddha sees. He pauses, and then he thinks of his wife (Sirissa). He then feels his nephew’s hand on his shoulder, gently asking Ananda if he’s okay, which brings Ananda back to the world.
