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
In the oppressive heat of midafternoon, Nanda Kaul lies motionless on her bed, trying to imagine herself as a tree trunk, or a stone pillar—as an inanimate object unruffled by the heat and unbothered by the incessant buzzing of flies and cicadas or the brief quarrel of parrots in the trees. Nanda Kaul has been practicing this stillness for decades; she started when she was still the Vice-Chancellor’s wife, and their small children and their guests overran her house. Every day, for one hour, she would retreat to her bedroom and try to lie in silent stillness, even though the sounds of the children and the servants constantly distracted her. As the hour progressed, it became harder to ignore everything, to choose not to respond. The effort would take her breath away.
Two related things become clear as Nanda Kaul tries to nap during the heat of the day. First, the heat and the noise of the parrots in the trees remind her of how little she controls in her life. She has no more power over the parrots than over her family. In response, she tries to practice self-control. But the degree of effort this exercise requires—both in the past and in the present—suggests that it does not come to her as naturally as she wishes others (or herself) to believe. Still, it’s clear from the anguished tone of her memory how much she resented the caregiving duties she was expected to perform during her marriage.
Themes
Nanda Kaul remembers how immediately her responsibilities would flood back in on her when she rose from her bed. She wonders if she was ever alone in that period of her life. She wracks her brain and remembers one evening after a badminton and garden party. She had gotten up from her bed and paced the lawn in the moonlight while the house slept. From the shadows of the trees, she watched her husband, the Vice-Chancellor, return from bringing one very special guest home. She watched him go inside and waited until the light clicked off in the bedroom where he sleeps apart from her. She remembers feeling completely alone in that one moment. In the present, Nanda Kaul feels the first cool breeze of the afternoon, and she rises from bed.
This memory gives insight into Nanda Kaul’s character. Clearly, relationships have caused her pain in the past, in the form of her children’s incessant demands and in the emotional emptiness at the heart of her marriage to the Vice-Chancellor. Nanda Kaul has time to herself because her husband is having an affair with one of the party guests, and she clearly knows about it—that’s why they sleep in separate bedrooms. Thus, while she tries to cast this as a moment of personal triumph, the book clearly suggests that it was also a moment of pain.
Themes
