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 has become obsessed with Raka. She paces the verandah at twilight, waiting for her great-granddaughter to come home. Desperate to keep the child’s attention, Nanda Kaul finds herself telling long stories again, the words spilling out in a great flood. She describes the animals she kept when her children were young: dogs, monkeys, and horses. She’s so wrapped up in her story that she doesn’t notice how dubious Raka looks. And she keeps talking with hardly a pause for breath until the owls begin to call softly. She describes the badminton court the Vice-Chancellor put in for the children.
Nanda Kaul didn’t want Raka to come because she didn’t want anyone to need her. But it’s increasingly clear that she needs Raka more than Raka needs—or wants—her. Her insistence on isolation and solitude sounds increasingly hollow. And despite her own resentment over the feeling of being trapped by relationships and responsibilities earlier in her life, Nanda Kaul has no compunctions about trying to trap Raka with her stories.
Themes
Raka hates being stuck in the fantasy world of Nanda Kaul’s nostalgia, and she longs to run away back to the charred and abandoned cottage. She yawns with boredom. Nanda Kaul interprets the yawn as fatigue.
Raka wears her feelings and beliefs simply and acts according to them. Thus, she can see that Nanda Kaul is lying to her—and to herself—by painting a rosy picture of her life. And as readers occupy Raka’s viewpoint here, the book warns them not to trust Nanda Kaul’s stories but to look beneath them for the painful truths she wishes to hide.
Themes
