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
Nanda Kaul watches Raka seek out Ram Lal with growing jealousy. Every evening, they sit near the kettle together, chatting. Ram Lal offers Raka the reassurance that Nanda Kaul is unable or unwilling to give her. Nanda Kaul can’t hear Ram Lal warning Raka to avoid the ravine at night, telling her that it’s haunted by churails, demonic spirits that eat the bones of the dead animals disposed of by Pasteur Institute.
Nanda Kaul’s isolation is a reaction to the resentment she felt at being trapped by familial responsibilities in her marriage. But now it’s becoming clear to readers that she might want more connection than she thinks. Ram Lal’s stories about churails emphasize this, as they point out the dangers of being too wild and too isolated.
Themes
Suddenly, a band of langur monkeys tears into the garden, swarming the fruit trees, throttling the hydrangea flowers, and invading the kitchen. Raka runs around, waving her arms to scare them off, while Ram Lal bangs on the kettle. Little boys run into the garden to help drive the monkeys away, and soon just one slow-moving mother and her baby are left. Ram Lal picks up a rock to throw at them, but Raka leaps on his arm, preventing him from doing so. In the ensuing silence, Nanda Kaul orders Ram Lal to dismiss the boys from the garden, seething inside herself over the fact that Raka hadn’t even turned toward her Nani to share the excitement.
The langur monkeys bring the kind of chaotic disruption to Carignano that Nanda Kaul feared. Notably, however, Raka’s arrival has barely created a ripple, at least on the superficial level of Nanda Kaul’s daily habits and activities. In stopping Ram Lal from throwing the rock, Raka protects the mother monkey from harm in a way that she’s incapable of protecting her own mother. And by aligning herself with the monkeys rather than the humans, she once again declares her own freedom and wildness. She belongs more to the natural world than the human one.
Themes
