Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Fire on the Mountain, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Nature of Freedom
Honesty and Self-Reflection
Trauma and Suffering
Class and Privilege
Female Oppression
Summary
Analysis
From the garden of her hilltop house, named Carignano, Nanda Kaul sees a mailman struggling slowly up the mountain road. She fervently hopes that he’s not coming for her: she loves the house on account of its quiet solitude, and letters carry nothing but demands. She stares at the mailman, but he doesn’t receive her psychic message to stay away.
The book opens with an image of Nanda Kaul alone, self-sufficient and content in her environment. Nanda Kaul sees herself this solitary way. But her irritation at the mailman’s approach suggests that she struggles to maintain this solitude because she can’t control the outside world. It's interesting that the only thing Nanda Kaul can imagine him bringing is a demand, although readers will have to learn more about her to understand why.
Themes
While the mailman toils up the road, Nanda Kaul surveys her surroundings. She loves the barren, light-drenched landscape of Kasauli. From Carignano, she can see the Himalayas to the north and the Indian plains to the south. Apricot trees stand in the lee of the house. Nanda Kaul picks up a fallen apricot and inspects it. It’s bruised, and when she discards it, a hoopoe swoops down and snatches it up. The hoopoe and its shrilly screaming fledglings nest under the eaves near Nanda Kaul’s bedroom. She doesn’t enjoy this. She does love the house, however, and she can’t imagine what it was like before it was hers.
In this moment, the hoopoe feeding its young becomes an emblem of familial and domestic responsibilities. Nanda Kaul rejects these responsibilities as she rejects the imperfect, bruised apricot. But she still experiences the disruption of the birds’ presence. Nanda Kaul can no more ignore them than whoever sends her letters, even if she wants to.
Themes
