“The pupils are in shades of bruises and scabs. Scrambled browns, blues and greens—all of which disregard you. You have lived in refugee camps, visited street markets at noon, and fallen asleep at packed casinos. The heave of humanity is never picturesque. This heave throngs towards you and heaves you away from the counter.”

In this quote, imagery is used to portray the many layers of human nature’s messiness. Humanity is full of different kinds of ugliness. In this novel, death doesn’t free someone from their capacity for physical and emotional ugliness. Rather, death replicates humans’ lived lives. While living, people have born challenges like living in refugee camps, but they also have picturesque experiences like street markets at noon. Despite this wide berth of human experience, death brings everyone together in a democratic space that highlights the messiness of human existence. Here, the various dead people and the phrase “heaves you away” represent the chaotic nature of being part of the human population.

“For atheists there are only moral choices. Accept that we are alone and strive to create heaven on earth. Or accept that no one’s watching and do whatever the hell you like. The latter is by far easier.”

The afterlife in this novel voids the religious beliefs of people while they were living. For atheists, Karunatilaka’s depiction of the afterlife is confirmation that organized religions’ beliefs were false, but it also reveals that there is a soul that continues through spirituality. Notably, atheists end up sharing the space with believers. This afterlife is a democratic space in which everyone endures the journey of finding the Light or committing their spirits to the In Between. The atheist’s individual moral code, separate from religion, could still be relevant in this version of the afterlife.